-i\MH 



^Obo^ 





_ 



< c < 



The Many-Sided Paul 



A Study of the Character 
of the Great Apostle as 
unfolded in The Acts and 
the Pauline Epistles . . 



BY 



GEORGE FRANCIS GREENE 

Minister of the Presbyterian Church, Cranford, New Jersey 



Grasp but about thee, in this life so rich, so free, 
And where thou touchest it will interest thee." 



PHILADELPHIA 

THE WESTMINSTER PRESS 
1901 



I - I o 3 







Tin, t ^Pyright, i 9 oi, by 

Ahe Trustees of thf p^c 



: v- ,<v 



;wv 



Go mv mite 

This Book is Affectionately Inscribed 



Preface 



This little work does not profess to be another 
of the now numerous biographies of the Apostle 
Paul, nor is it a study of the Pauline Theology. 
It is simply an attempt to present in popular 
form a tolerably complete, though condensed, 
review of the character of the great apostle by 
arranging under their proper heads the materials 
for the portraiture that are in the New Testament. 
The one work with the plan of which my aim 
most nearly coincides, so far as I am acquainted 
with the literature of the subject, is Dr. J. S. 
Howson's The Character of St. Paul. But How- 
son's study, brilliant, sympathetic and spiritual 
as it is, does not claim completeness in any 
sense — it sets forth four or five aspects of its 
subject only. I have tried to attach to the frame- 
work of my scheme all the principal features of 
the apostle's history as revealed objectively in The 
5 



6 PREFACE 

Acts and subjectively in the Pauline letters, to- 
gether with the main outlines of his teaching so 
far as these throw light on the apostle's own per- 
sonality. So far as I know, then, my plan is 
unique in that it aims to discuss, though often 
very cursorily, all the main features of the ma- 
terial in question, not as sources of a biography, 
nor as elements of a department of biblical 
theology, but as indications of a character. 

While I trust that I have dealt justly with the 
historical matters involved, and that I have placed 
a correct interpretation on the language of the 
apostle, I do not offer this work as a contribu- 
tion to critical scholarship. It is sent forth with 
the hope that it may serve to profit some at 
least of the large class of wide-awake, intelli- 
gent Christians who in a busy world have little 
time to use helps to the understanding of the 
great personages and the great teachings of 
God's word other than their English Bibles and 
their concordances. Possibly there are Sunday- 
school teachers, — now that the topical study of 
the Bible is beginning to receive larger attention 
in our Bible schools, — who may find in the fol- 
lowing pages an outline of an important field of 
study which they may profitably enlarge upon. 
Possibly, also, there are students for the minis- 



PREFACE 7 

try who may be aided in catching somewhat of 
the sublime spirit of the great apostle from this 
brief account of the qualities and methods of the 
greatest preacher since Pentecost. But it is to 
the average reader that the work is chiefly ad- 
dressed. 

I deem it unnecessary to justify myself for 
adding another to the almost endless list of 
essays upon this noble subject. It is one of the 
best evidences of the divine source of the apos- 
tle's power and grandeur of spiritual stature that 
the world never tires of our theme. The study 
of St. Paul is like the study of life itself, — so 
long as men recognize as features of human 
thought and character the struggle with guilt 
and sin, and the aspiration after holiness and 
God and a blessed immortality, so long will the 
Christian consciousness gladly welcome new trib- 
utes to the wondrous personality of this " slave 
of Christ"; so long will the last word concern- 
ing him yet remain unsaid. 

I am not unfamiliar with many of the radical 
and unsympathetic treatises on the general sub- 
ject that have appeared in English and German 
during the past three decades; but I do not deem 
it necessary here to name even a partial list of 
them. A good bibliography of the subject, 



8 PREFACE 

which may be consulted by those who are in- 
terested, is appended to Stevens' The Pauline 
Theology. 

In the use of Scripture quotations I have uni- 
formly followed the text of the Revised Version. 

G. F. G. 

Cranford, New Jersey, February, 1901. 



CONTENTS 



i 

The Pre-Christian Paul n 

II 

The Faith of St. Paul 31 

III 
St. Paul the Preacher 51 

IV 

St. Paul the Missionary 77 

V 
St. Paul the Pastor 99 

VI 

The Intellectual Greatness of St. Paul 125 

VII 

The Friendships of St. Paul 147 

VIII 

St. Paul the Gentleman 167 

9 



io Contents 

IX 
St. Paul the Theologian 189 

X 

St. Paul's Christlikeness . . . . 219 

Appendix I, Approximate dates, etc 245 

Appendix II, The Epistles of St. Paul 247 

Index of Scripture References ... 249 

General Index 255 



THE PRE-CHRISTIAN PAUL 



Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled 

The heavens, God thought on me his child ; 

Ordained a life for me, arrayed 

Its circumstances, every one 

To the minutest. 

— Robert Browning. 

I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this 
city, at the feet of Gamaliel, instructed according to the strict 
manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God.— 
Acts 22 : j. 



THE PRE-CHRISTIAN PAUL 

What was St. Paul prior to his conversion ? In 
considering the early life of this most remarkable 
of men we shall dwell less on its outer than on 
its inner features. 

A few words must suffice to summarize the 
events of the period closing with the Damascus 
noon. About the time that the angels were 
heralding the birth of Jesus in little Bethlehem, 
Paul was born in the populous Cilician city on 
the Cydnus — two streams rising far apart, though 
at nearly the same hour in the ages, and destined 
the one marvelously to absorb into its own 
bosom the waters of the other. It was probably 
at the age of thirteen 1 that the young Jew of 
Tarsus was sent to Jerusalem to complete a rab- 
binic education. May not his first visit to the 
holy city have corresponded in time with the 

14 'At five years of age, let children begin the Scripture; at ten, the 
Mischna ; at thirteen, let them be subjects of the law." — {The Mischna, 
quoted by Tholuck.) This presents our reason for suggesting the age of the 
young Paul as thirteen at his first visit to Jerusalem. So Farrar. Godet, 
however, {Introduction to Romans) says "twelve." 

13 



i 4 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

first visit of Jesus at the age of twelve to the city 
of David? Possibly; though it does not appear 
that he ever consciously beheld Jesus during the 
earthly life of our Lord. Here, then, the young 
Paul studied, while doubtless a member of the 
household of a married sister (cf. Acts 2y. 16), 
under the direction of the gentle and far-famed 
Gamaliel. His severe rabbinic studies ended, he 
appears to have left Jerusalem not to return until 
after the Ascension and the momentous events 
of the day of Pentecost. Our first clear view of 
him subsequent to his student period is when 
we see him, "a young man" (Acts 7: 58), prob- 
ably between thirty and thirty-five years of age, 
standing among the official enemies of Christi- 
anity over the mangled body of Stephen. This 
was the beginning of the last and darkest hour 
of the night. His journey to the north, soon 
afterwards, on an errand of terror and death, and 
his effective arrest on the way by the Spirit of 
God, marked the opening of the dawn. 

It is generally admitted that elements of a 
providential preparation for the apostolic career 
of St. Paul are discoverable in the portion of his 
life preceding his conversion. His twofold na- 
tionality — a "Hebrew of Hebrews" in family 
(Phil. 3:552 Cor. 1 1 : 22), a " freeborn " Roman in 



THE PRE-CHRISTIAN PAUL 15 

citizenship (Acts 22: 28) — is one of these ele- 
ments that have received frequent recognition. 
As an educated Jew he treasured the "oracles" 
of God (Rom. 3: 2), priceless in their threefold 
value as law, prophecy, and psalmody; while he 
shared the Messianic hope in common with the 
chosen people. The ancient predictions of the 
Christ were at his tongue's end, though he did 
not until later comprehend their true meaning. 
He could trace from its beginning the line of 
Messianic teaching which extends like a thread 
of gold from Genesis to Malachi. Thus in his 
Christian period he would be well prepared to 
preach the Christ of prophecy to the covenant 
people; and as a Roman citizen there would be 
opened to him as Christ-bearer many a gate in the 
Gentile world that no political alien could hope 
to enter. It has also frequently been pointed 
out that the knowledge of Greek letters and life 
which he must have gained under the shadow 
of the university of Tarsus, was a provision 
divinely ordered to equip him for his apostle- 
ship. We can hardly believe that he was ever 
an enrolled student of that university; for the 
poetry, the mythology, and even the history of 
Greece, would probably have been frowned on 
as heathenish by his devout parents. But a 



1 6 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

great mind cannot dwell for years beside an 
important school of learning without catching 
somewhat of its spirit; and certainly from some 
source in his early days the apostle learned 
enough of Greek life and manners to enable 
him afterwards to feel at his ease among the 
schoolmen of the " Mother of arts and elo- 
quence," and to stand unabashed in the polished 
circles of Corinth. 1 Add to the foregoing the 
fact that in being taught a trade— and one, too, 
that could be profitably employed almost any- 
where, — he was insured against the helplessness 
of utter poverty in unfriendly situations, — thus 
made like "a vineyard that is fenced," — and we 
have before us the principal features of the early 
providential preparation of St. Paul for his apos- 
tleship that are usually specified. 

In these ways was this marvelous character 
being fitted during the first three decades of his 
life for his sublime mission. But a close inspec- 
tion reveals likewise the hand of God during his 
early years in establishing within him certain 
moral qualities as forerunners of his ensuing 



1 It is generally agreed now among scholars, we believe, that the three 
quotations from Greek poets found in St. Paul's writings form an insuffi- 
cient proof of the claim that he was deeply versed in Greek literature. The 
three quotations in question appear in Acts 17 : 28 ; 1 Cor. 15 : 33 ; Tit. 
1 : 12. 



THE PRE-CHRISTIAN PAUL 17 

faith. We are inclined to think that too much 
has commonly been made of the antagonisms 
between the two great divisions of his life and 
too little of their points of agreement. The 
pulpit has too frequently drawn a parallel be- 
tween the conversion of utterly infidel and god- 
less persons and that of this man who, however 
misled, never knowingly opposed truth and 
never did violence to his conscience. Theolo- 
gians have often erred in presenting the impres- 
sion that the chill and blackness of the grave are 
not more antagonistic to the glow and glory of 
the resurrection dawn than the early character of 
St. Paul was opposed to his later character. But 
must we not see, on the contrary, that there was 
a spiritual and logical connection between the 
two divisions of his life ? Was he not, in a 
sense, a child of grace from the very beginning ? 
Instead of representing his conversion as a chasm 
between the two sections of his career, should 
we not rather regard it as a bridge? Or, to 
change the figure, are we not nearer right in 
regarding the relation between Paul the Pharisee 1 
and St. Paul the Christian as that between the 
seedtime and the harvest, than in regarding it 

1 1 do not think it necessary, considering the scope of this essay, to dwell 
on the significance of the two names of our subject— Saul and Paul. I use 
the latter designation exclusively. 



1 8 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

as that between a dead planet and a world of 

warmth and light ? Viewed strictly as an ac- 
ceptance of Christ the conversion of St. Paul was 
no more remarkable than that of Matthew the 
publican, or Peter the fisherman, though its ac- 
companying features were more dramatic and 
striking. It was less remarkable as a spiritual 
revelation than the conversion of a man like Cor- 
nelius, for instance, in whom we cannot believe 
that there were early moral forces so directly, so 
urgently, impelling toward the light. What we 
mean is this: The complex of moral forces at 
work in the soul and experience of St. Paul from 
his birth, and which sprang from his heredity, 
his environment, his training, and above all 
from the constraining action of the Spirit of 
God, impelled him as irresistibly toward the 
result of the experience of the Damascus road 
as the needle points to the pole. The eye of 
Omniscience must have seen the end from the 
beginning. At his first breath the stamp of 
Christ's ownership was upon his soul, though 
men knew it not. 

And this was the matured view of the apostle 
himself. He tells the Galatians that his Christian 
experience and apostleship were due to the 
"good pleasure of God, who separated " him, 



THE PRE-CHRISTIAN PAUL 19 

"even from " his "mother's womb, and called" 
him "through his grace, to reveal his Son " in him 
(Gal. 1:15, 16). He was born into God's plan at 
the moment he was born into the world. Nay, he 
regards himself as an object of "prenatal grace"; 
for in his letter to the Ephesians he classes him- 
self with those whom God has chosen in Christ 
before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1 : 4). 
And later in the same letter he includes himself 
with those who are God's "workmanship, cre- 
ated in Christ Jesus for good works, which God 
afore prepared that we should walk in them " 
(Eph. 2: 10). And in his speech to his people in 
Jerusalem at the beginning of his first imprison- 
ment he quotes approvingly the words of Ana- 
nias at his conversion: "The God of our fathers 
hath appointed thee to know his will " (Acts 
22'. 14). Plainly, in view of these representa- 
tions, we must believe that a chain of moral 
causes connected the Damascus high noon with 
the indefinite past of this wondrous career. He 
who appointed the places of Orion and the 
Pleiades; He who led Israel in the time of the 
desert wandering as well as in the time of the 
possession of the goodly land; He who said to 
Cyrus, "I have surnamed thee, though thou hast 
not known me" (Isa. 45:4); He, the God of 



20 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

grace and mercy, surely led Paul of the ante- 
Christian days unerringly toward the birthday of 
his apostleship. 1 

But let us inquire concerning the particular 
ways in which divine grace wrought in St. Paul's 
moral nature during his early years to prepare 
the way for his conversion. 

First of all he was given a whole-hearted re- 
spect for duty. We look in vain for any indica- 
tion that he ever trifled with the eternal law of 
right that is written on the conscience. He 
obeyed his conscience from the beginning. As 
one has well said: "He reverenced his con- 
science as his king." In the full flush of his 
Christian manhood he could sincerely declare to 
the Sanhedrin: "Brethren, I have lived before 
God in all good conscience until this day" 
(Acts 2y. i). With unfaltering accent he was 
able to declare to King Agrippa that though he 
had been mistaken in his early career, yet he had 
been sincere, in his opposition to the name of 
Jesus: "I verily thought with myself, that I 

1 "In a sense, and to an extent which I doubt if even Paul himself fully 
realized, though he was mightily impressed by it, and repeatedly referred 
to it, he was truly separated from his mother's womb for his special work." 
— R. J. Drummond, The Relation of the Apostolic Teaching to the Teaching 
of Christ, p. 53. (Kerr Lectures, 1899, 1900.) To emphasize this matter 
is plainly to magnify divine grace and power as factors in the apostle's char- 
acter and course. 



THE PRE-CHRISTIAN PAUL 21 

ought to do many things contrary to the name of 
Jesus of Nazareth " (Acts 26 : 9). And in old age, 
unbosoming himself to his beloved Timothy, he 
could declare that he had inherited from his an- 
cestors a disposition to obey his conscience: "I 
thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers in 
a pure conscience" (2 Tim. 1 : 3). So then, even 
in the darkest period of his life, when he appears 
farthest from Christ, he does not reveal a delib- 
erate trampling upon conscience. 

Hence we are not surprised to find that he was 
faithful always to the law of the Mosaic cove- 
nant. "As touching the righteousness which is 
in the law" he found himself " blameless" (Phil. 
3: 6). So far as man could keep the law in heart 
and life he kept it. The deceit and trickery of a 
Jacob, the deliberate acts of wrongdoing of a 
David, including covetousness, lust, and murder, 
the impurity of a Solomon, — indeed, the stains of 
apostasy and immorality that so frequently dis- 
figure the characters of many of the notable men 
of Hebrew history, — there is none of these ever 
in the life of St. Paul. Such an attitude toward 
duty, toward conscience, toward God's revela- 
tion, must needs keep a man's face toward the 
light. The words of Jesus to him at his con- 
version: "It is hard for thee to kick against the 



22 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

goad" (Acts 26: 14), imply that conscience had 
been conversing with him on the way. As Farrar 
well states it: "He was forced to go up into the 
dark tribunal of his own conscience." 1 And as 
he had always hitherto followed conscience he 
would hardly have been himself if he had re- 
fused to listen now to conscience' new word. 
Thus his life training as a servant of conscience 
was bound to lead him to the foot of the Cross 
the moment he recognized conscience as beckon- 
ing him thither. 

Grace wrought in the early career of St. Paul, 
also, by impelling him to reverence the nature 
and authority of God. He was never an atheist 
nor an agnostic. The God of Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob, was his God. The God of creation, 
the God of redemption, the God of providence, 
the God of judgment, the God of mercy, was 
his sovereign. With the most faithful he ac- 
knowledged fully the sovereignty of God over all 
his creatures, and the obligation of every man to 
render to him obedience and love. With the 
most devout he believed in the efficacy and 
preciousness of prayer. Into the spirit of the 
earnest, loyal appeals of Moses to the throne of 
the Highest, and into the spirit of the sublime 

1 Farrar, Life and Work of St. Paul, p. 103. 



THE PRE-CHRISTIAN PAUL 23 

hymns of Israel's sweet singer, he could fully 
enter. No one can fail to see what a world of 
difference there is between an attitude like his 
before God and that of a shallow Gallio, who 
" cared for none of these things" (Acts 18: 17), 
or of a cynical Agrippa, or of a "jesting Pilate." 1 
By implanting in him, through inheritance and 
training, this reverence for himself God well pre- 
pared Paul for his Christian faith and for his sub- 
sequent Christian zeal. Let the young Paul see, 
as he shall one day, that it is God who anointed 
Jesus, and God who raised him from the dead, 
and his hostility to the Cross shall vanish in a 
moment! 

And, still further, the early Paul appears to 
have been providentially prepared for faith in 
Christ and faithful work under his leadership by 
being given a disposition to service for God 
through self-sacrifice. This brings us to the very 
center of his nature. Behind his religious train- 
ing, behind his conscious recognition of God's 
claim upon him, we suppose there existed a pre- 
disposition toward self-sacrifice. It was his 
birthright. God gave him the spirit of self-abne- 
gation — and he gave it as he gives breath, and 



1 Lord Bacon: "What is truth ? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay 
for an answer." — Essay on Truth. 



24 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

a beating heart. Zeal for God's service as he 
understood it appears to have brought him to 
the class room of Gamaliel, to have led him to 
cast his vote against Stephen, and to have thrown 
him into active opposition against the Christians; 
but surely nothing of self-interest appears in his 
early course. There is not the slightest hint that 
he sought place or pelf during his pre-Christian 
period. Misguided he was, but selfish, never. 
His conversion glorified his self-sacrificing spirit 
and gave a right direction to it, but it did not 
originate it. It was a natural quality divinely 
given, not, indeed, diminishing his need of 
the Christ, but serving as a noble instrument 
of God's Spirit in the day of his clarified spir- 
itual vision, to bind him to the Master as with 
hoops of steel. 

Is it not clear that in thus endowing him with 
a self-sacrificing temper God was preparing him 
in this respect as well as in others for obedience 
when the great call from above should sound in 
his ears ? There was in this regard, as has been 
forcibly said, a great "inherent congruity be- 
tween the character of Paul and the life of 
Jesus." 1 The keynote of the ministry of Jesus 
is herein: "The Son of man came not to be 

1 Matheson, Spiritual Development of St. Paul, p. 24. 



THE PRE-CHRISTIAN PAUL 25 

ministered unto, but to minister" (Matt. 20: 28). 
Bring the disinterested Paul and the self-giving 
Jesus together, then, and what must follow ? 
Why this: that the central principle of the life 
and ministry of the Redeemer must awaken the 
immediate and enthusiastic admiration of the 
Pharisee. Why, then, was he ever an enemy of 
Jesus ? He never was. It was the name of Jesus, 
and that only, against which the young Pharisee 
raged. Jesus himself he never saw, he never 
knew, until the day of his conversion. The mo- 
ment he saw Jesus in the heavens, and heard the 
voice of the Crucified and Risen, and recognized 
that divine personality, that moment an infinite 
and imperishable sympathy was established be- 
tween them. A man who is naturally selfish or 
luxurious may be, indeed, subdued to the Spirit 
of Jesus through divine grace. Zacchseus affords 
an illustration of this. But an unselfish man, 
other features being the same, will be far more 
likely to recognize the divine personality of Jesus. 
There is more room in the self-sacrificing soul on 
which faith may be established. 

Thus we cannot but believe the view errone- 
ous which regards St. Paul as being, prior to his 
conversion, a monster of unbelief and wicked- 
ness. If we are asked how we are to reconcile 



26 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

with this statement those assertions of the 
apostle himself in which he declares that during 
his early life he has been a "blasphemer, and a 
persecutor, and injurious " (i Tim. i : 13), and is 
consequently the "least of the apostles" (1 Cor. 
15: 9), and the "chief" of sinners (1 Tim. 1: 
15), we reply that in interpreting these rep- 
resentations account is to be taken of the utter 
humility of the apostle, and that so clear in 
the days of his full development was his 
knowledge of the perfections of Christ, that in 
contrast every element of his early ignorance and 
shortcoming was presented to his consciousness 
as black and hideous — as relatively small stains 
are great defects on the face of a finished work 
of a Michelangelo or Phidias. The shining, 
peaceful face of the dying Stephen must have 
haunted him to the last; he could never efface 
the memory of the fact that he had blasphemed 
the name if he had not spoken against the char- 
acter of Jesus; he always sorrowed that he had 
once hunted to the death, though mistakenly, 
the servants of the Master. But he had never 
to reproach himself that he had even at his worst 
quenched "Conscience, . . . that little 
spark of celestial fire," 1 or said with the fool 

1 George Washington. 



THE PRE-CHRISTIAN PAUL 27 

"There is no God'' (Ps. 14: 1), or idolized lux- 
ury, "curst by heaven's decree." 1 

The present-day antitype of Paul the Pharisee, 
then, is not the infidel, nor the agnostic, nor the 
flippant and indifferent worldling, nor the reck- 
less and bold violator of God's law, nor the 
ignorant and besotted victim of sensuality; but 
— and his name is legion — the respectable, 
cultivated, outwardly correct moralist, who bows 
before the sovereignty of God, who admires the 
beautiful and the good, who is conscientious to 
a fault, but who has never acknowledged the 
just supremacy of Christ. And in his remote- 
ness from Christ the modern moralist too often, 
it is to be feared, has deep in his heart a sort of 
contempt for believers and faith, which corre- 
sponds in quality with the contempt that in a 
different age led Paul to active persecution of 
Christ's people. At all events, there are always 
those with whom the one thing needful is an 
appreciation of Christ, and who are, like the 
young ruler and like the young Paul, 2 because 
they sincerely honor the right, though they have 
not discovered the narrow way, not far from the 
kingdom of God. 

1 Goldsmith, The Deserted Village. 

2 It will be remembered that an old tradition makes the young ruler 
(Matt. 19 : 16) to be none other than the young Saul of Tarsus. 



28 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

In view of the foregoing what account shall be 
given of the method of St. Paul's conversion ? We 
admit its distinctly supernatural features. The 
sudden appearance of the glorified Jesus and 
the sound of his voice in the sky, we believe to 
have been objectively real. We have no sym- 
pathy with the various attempts which have 
been made to explain away the supernatural 
features of the phenomenon that arrested the 
young zealot. We agree also to the claim that 
the instant transformation wrought in this fiery 
opponent of the Church by his conversion affords 
an unanswerable argument for the divine source 
of the Christian religion. Thus Farrar states it: 
'•'It is impossible to exaggerate the importance 
of Paul's conversion as one of the evidences of 
Christianity. That the same man who just be- 
fore was persecuting Christianity with the most 
violent hatred should come, all at once, to be- 
lieve in Him whose followers he had been seek- 
ing to destroy, and that in this faith he should 
' become a ' new creature ' — what is this but a 
victory which Christianity owed to nothing but 
the spell of its own inherent power?" 1 

But precisely how did God act at his conver- 
sion to bring about the transformation in ques- 

1 Farrar, Life and Work of St. Paul. Ch. 10. 



THE PRE-CHRISTIAN PAUL 29 

tion ? He revealed Jesus to him, — the real Jesus, 
the Jesus never hitherto known to him except as 
a name, the Jesus of Calvary, and of the Mount 
of Ascension. That revelation was the essential 
feature of God's act in his conversion. 

And what precisely was the nature of the con- 
version ? It was knowledge taking the place of 
ignorance, and, in consequence of that, devotion 
created in place of a vanished antagonism. It 
was essentially ignorance of Jesus departing, and 
knowledge of him arriving. It was, to state the 
matter differently, hearing distinctly the asser- 
tion of God's will with respect to Jesus, and 
yielding quick obedience to that will. With this 
there was an instantaneous self-recognition, an 
apprehension of the futility of looking for peace 
through a zealous attempt to serve God in one's 
own strength; and there was also a vision of 
peace on another roadway. Viewing again 
God's act in this conversion, the essential feature 
in it was not the blinding flash of light, nor the 
thunder peal, but the revelation of the divine will, 
and the driving home to a human consciousness 
of the unmistakable sense of an obligation to 
follow a path that the Most High appoints. 

With such a past, and such a present., the future 
must be certain. Let anv man or woman have a 



So THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

sincere desire for the peace of God, have a long 
training, as St. Paul had, in the school of con- 
science, have reverence for God's authority, have 
a predisposition to a life of self-sacrificing serv- 
ice; let that person withal be brought somehow 
to see the hopelessness of a life that trusts only 
to its own good works; and finally bring that 
person through the agency of the Holy Spirit 
face to face with the real Jesus Christ — not the 
mere name of Jesus, not the Christ of any church, 
or school, or creed, but the actual, loving, attract- 
ive, reigning, adorable Christ, — and it will be safe 
to predict that the soul of that one also, — con- 
strained of the Spirit, yet also of its own unfet- 
tered volition, — will cry out, with sorrow in 
view of the past, but with unspeakable joy in 
anticipation of the future, " Lord, what wilt 
thou have me to do ? " 



THE FAITH OF ST. PAUL 



Celestial King ! Oh, let thy presence pass 

Before my spirit, and an image fair 

Shall meet that look of mercy from on high, 

As the reflected image in a glass 

Doth meet the look of him who seeks it there 

And owns its being to the gazer's eye. 

— Longfellow. 

Faith is operative in love, and must produce good works as 
the inevitable proof of its existence. — Philip Schaff. 

I have been crucified with Christ ; yet I live ; and yet no 
longer I, but Christ liveth in me : and that life which I now 
live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of 
God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me. — Gal. 2 : 20. 



II 

THE FAITH OF ST. PAUL 

Apart from its divine Founder, Christianity has 
in St. Paul its noblest exponent. " Christianity 
got the opportunity in him of showing the world 
the whole force that was in it." But the great- 
ness of Paul the Christian is the greatness of sub- 
jection. He is chief among the world's spiritual 
giants because more completely than are others 
he is the bondservant of Christ. Thus he is the 
best illustration of faith. After his conversion 
the life he lived in the flesh he lived in faith, the 
faith which is in the Son of God. Never, in- 
deed, has there lived a champion of the gospel 
whose character could more accurately be de- 
scribed by the one word — faith. 

We are to consider, then, the faith of St. Paul. 
Let us see in him that living principle which, 
as Luther said, waits not for work but is ever 
working. 1 It is not faith viewed as a topic of 
the apostle's teaching which here interests us, 

1 Preface to Romans. 

33 



34 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

but faith contemplated as an element of his 
spiritual life. So far as we are led to refer to 
his statements concerning faith let us employ 
them solely for the light they throw upon the 
experience of their author. And as faith in 
general is a vague term, let us understand that 
what we are describing is "saving faith," — 
what Toplady called the "eye of the soul," 
— the faith that connects the life of the be- 
liever with the life of the Redeemer. And how 
accurately may the nature of the faith that saves 
be determined by distinguishing the elements of 
that act of the soul of St. Paul which joined him 
to his Lord, and kept the tie unbroken ! Would 
we learn what Christian faith is ? Surely a good 
way is to fix the attention on faith's most splen- 
did illustration. 

At the outset we note the element of knowl- 
edge in St. Paul's faith. Consider his spiritual 
birthday. He hears a supernatural call. "Saul, 
Saul, why persecutest thou me? . . . Rise, 
and enter into the city" (Acts 9: 4-6). Here is 
a summons from above. This summons he ap- 
prehends as a matter of knowledge. Then there 
are other facts related to his present condition 
which he apprehends as knowledge. He knows 
the testimony of the Scriptures concerning the 



THE FAITH OF ST. PAUL 35 

Messiah. He knows what conscience is urging in 
the issue before him. He knows that he has 
spiritual needs that hitherto have been unsat- 
isfied. He knows that faith in the glorified 
Jesus now addressing him has rendered other 
lives beautiful — notably that of Stephen. All of 
these things, and others, he knows; and on the 
basis of this knowledge his new belief springs 
into being. Thus we see that his teaching cor- 
responds with his experience when he pre- 
sents in the Epistle to the Romans the thought 
that intelligent hearing must precede belief: 
"How shall they believe in him whom they 
have not heard?" (Rom. 10: 14) and "Belief 
cometh of hearing" (Rom. 10: 17). Thus we 
are prepared, too, for his triumphant declara- 
tion to Timothy: "I know him whom I have 
believed" (2 Tim. 1: 12). Knowledge enters 
into his faith; or rather, so far as his moral na- 
ture alone considered is concerned, it is the root 
of it. If therefore St. Paul's experience is typical, 
as it plainly is, we must conclude that there is no 
true faith that does not involve knowledge. 

We find accordingly that St. Paul's faith de- 
pends on evidence. The things he knows con- 
cerning the relation of his moral nature to God 
are accepted by him at his conversion as evi- 



36 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

dence of the justice of the demand upon him for 
his devotion. He trusts the testimony of Scrip- 
ture, the testimony of his enlightened conscience, 
the testimony afforded by the transforming effect 
of faith in other characters, the testimony of his 
consciousness that the demand upon him for 
obedience from Jesus is real. So far, then, as we 
discover a strengthening of his faith as his Chris- 
tian experience lengthens, we conclude that the 
result follows a deepening of his conviction of 
the reliability of the evidences of the divine i'n 
the Christian religion. But when we say that St. 
Paul's faith depends on evidence we say no more 
than that he habitually thinks and acts ration- 
ally. To believe without evidence is irrational. 
Indeed, faith apart from evidence is not faith, 
but credulity. 1 

We discover, again, that the faith of St. Paul 
involves will force. Not only is there at his con- 
version an intellectual apprehension of certain 
truths hitherto not recognized or accepted, or ac- 
cepted only in part, particularly of the truth of 
the transcendent excellence of Jesus Christ, but 
there is also obedience. He is divinely summoned 
to action. He obeys. In this he exerts power 
of will. This outputting of will power is plainly 

1 See A. A. Hodge's Outlines of Theology, xxx. 7. 



THE FAITH OF ST. PAUL 37 

an essential element of his faith ; and this 
harmonizes strictly with what appears in every 
instance of conversion under the earthly ministry 
of Jesus. "Come," is the Master's word to the 
disciples. Their obedience is a part of their 
faith. "Stretch forth thy hand," says Jesus to 
the man whose hand is withered (Matt. 12: 13). 
He wills to obey, and his thus willing is a condi- 
tion of his cure. The call to faith to the young 
ruler, to Nicodemus, to Zacchaeus, indeed to 
every individual Christ summons into his king- 
dom, is an appeal to the will, since it is a de- 
mand for obedience. Therefore, we are not sur- 
prised to find that St. Paul in his preaching 
always presents the call to faith as a command. 
Thus of the jailer in Philippi the apostle de- 
mands faith (Acts 16: 31); and thus he tells the 
Athenians that God " commandeth men that 
they should all everywhere repent" (Acts 17: 
30). But why multiply illustrations? No one 
who has given thought to the matter will 
question the statement that faith with St. Paul 
always involves an act of the will. It is not the 
same thing as, it is more than, belief, which is 
always involuntary. Will does not enter into 
speculative faith, which is a species of belief. It 
does enter into saving faith. The history of 



38 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

every true conversion may therefore be epito- 
mized in these inspired words: "He saith unto 
them, Come ye after me, . . . and they 
. . . followed him" (Matt. 4: 19, 20). 

But still further, we discover that the faith of 
St. Paul is an act that terminates upon a Person. 
Not a truth, not a system of truths, but a divine 
Person, is the ultimate object of that something 
we term his faith. When the scales fall from his 
eyes not a fact of history, not a record of a life, 
not a theological system, but the Person of One 
altogether lovely, occupies the center of his 
field of vision and remains there permanently. 
Therefore, in his teaching he invariably represents 
faith as an outgoing of soul toward the Person 
of Christ. For instance, he speaks of the faith 
of the Colossians as a receiving of Christ: " As 
therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so 
walk in him" (Col. 2: 6). He presents the 
same view of faith in the epistle to the Gala- 
tians : " Even we believed on Christ Jesus " 
(Gal. 2: 16); "For ye are all sons of God, through 
faith, in Christ Jesus " (Gal. 3: 26). Faith is not 
a believing about Jesus, but it is a believing on 
Jesus, or in Jesus. The distinction is unmistaka- 
ble. And so elsewhere. When we say that St. 
Paul accepted Christianity, therefore, we mean 



THE FAITH OF ST. PAUL 39 

that he accepted Christ; for, as Luthardt says, 
" Christ is Christianity." In order to believe as a 
Christian it is requisite that the soul go out in 
admiration and adoration toward Jesus Christ. 
Says George MacDonald somewhere, " Any 
faith in Him, however small, is better than any 
belief about Him, however great." That sen- 
tence betokens an accurate thinker. 

And finally, we see that trust is the very heart 
of that quality of the apostle we term his faith. 
The inner fiber of the new thing born into his 
nature on the Damascus road is trust — trust in 
Christ, and in his righteousness, and in his power 
to save and to keep. Henceforth he believes in 
Christ and on Christ. He stakes his all on the 
assumption of the power and love of the Master. 
The question of place, of occupation, of friends, 
of struggles, of triumphs, of failures, of rewards 
— he leaves all this with Him who is able to save 
to the uttermost. Or perhaps we ought rather to 
say that his faith is a trust in God who newly 
appears manifest in Jesus. His faith is confi- 
dence. It is a confiding without misgiving. At 
the end of his career he refers to it as a com- 
mittal to God. The text is familiar to everybody. 
"He is able," he says to his spiritual child, "to 
guard that which I have committed unto him " 



4 o THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

(2 Tim. i : 12). Shall we not say, then, that trust 
defines the notion of saving faith more accurately 
than the unqualified term faith ? Put thy trust 
in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. 
Thus we venture to paraphrase a familiar verse. 
Says one, "The word translated faith is equiva- 
lent to trust in a person;" and the words of A. 
A. Hodge are pertinent: "The specific act of 
saving faith which unites to Christ, and is the 
commencement, root and organ of our whole 
spiritual life, terminates upon Christ's person and 
work as Mediator, as presented in the offers and 
promises of the gospel. This assuredly includes 
trust in its very essence, and this is called saving 
faith by way of eminence." 1 

Surely it must be profitable for us thus to 
analyze what we term faith as illustrated in 
St. Paul. As an embodiment of the faith that 
saves he may more justly than any other serve as 
the typical Christian. This is so because each of 
the elements of his spiritual character appears in 
purer and more distinct colors than in the case of 
other believers. But we could not learn what 
faith is with us by determining what it is with 
him were it not in the main features of its nature 
alike in all. Surely, therefore, it must aid us in clear 

1 Outlines of Theology, xxx. 18. 



THE FAITH OF ST. PAUL 41 

thinking on the subject to learn thus, as we have, 
that saving faith is more than belief; that it is, 
indeed, a complex act, involving knowledge, 
obedience, and trust. Seeing, too, as we do, that 
trust is its soul, we cannot but recognize our 
moral accountability to God for its lack or 
possession. A child may not be held respon- 
sible for a degree of ignorance of a noble father; 
but he may justly be held responsible for failing 
to yield to him loyalty, obedience, and affection. 

We come now to the inquiry, What is St. 
Paul's conception of Christ? Who is he to the 
mind of the apostle as indicated by the latter's 
acts and words ? and what are his offices and 
characteristics ? and what is the measure of his 
authority over the souls of men ? Perhaps we 
can best approach this question by trying to 
determine what conception the apostle has of 
Christ immediately subsequent to the conversion. 

There are several sources of information open to 
us. We can hardly leave the address of Stephen 
out of account; for there is no doubt that the 
dying words of the protomartyr played an im- 
portant part, under God, in the transformation of 
the persecutor into the saint. Thus the Christ of 
Stephen's address, we feel assured, is substan- 
tially the Christ of St. Paul's earliest Christian 



42 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

faith. Then there are the three accounts of the 
conversion, — St. Luke's, in Acts 9, and the 
apostle's own, as reported by St. Luke, in Acts 
22, and 26. And lastly there are various reflec- 
tions of his early experience in the later writings 
of the apostle — as, for example, in 1 Cor. 15, and 
Gal. 1. When we bring together these various 
accounts of the conversion we find that we 
possess considerable data from which to infer the 
early Pauline conception of Christ. 

The Christ of St. Paul's earliest Christian expe- 
rience is, first of all, the Messiah of prophecy. 
We have seen that the young zealot was learned 
in the Scriptures, and that he shared the Messi- 
anic hope of his nation. He could not, then, 
have worshiped Jesus without identifying him 
with the expected Deliverer of Israel. From the 
first he must have clearly recognized Jesus as the 
fulfillment of prophecy, as his words to Agrippa 
indicate: "I stand unto this day testifying both 
to small and great, saying nothing but what the 
prophets and Moses did say should come; how 
that the Christ must suffer, and how that he first 
by the resurrection of the dead should proclaim 
light both to the people and to the Gentiles" 
(Acts 26: 22, 23). The Christ of St. Paul's early 
faith is also the Righteous One. The term 



THE FAITH OF ST. PAUL 43 

means "The (ideal) Just One. The highest 
messenger of God. The Innocent and entirely 
Righteous." 1 It is interesting to note as strik- 
ingly corroborative of our view of the vital and 
lasting impression produced by Stephen's address 
on the mind of St. Paul, that this expression as 
applied to Jesus by the apostle in his address be- 
fore Agrippa is apparently borrowed from the 
address of Stephen (Acts 7 : 52 ; 22 : 1 4). Through 
all the intervening years since the death of the 
protomartyr certain of the very words of the 
latter thus seem to have echoed in the apostle's 
soul; and as Stephen presented Jesus as the em- 
bodiment of all righteousness so we must be- 
lieve that the same conception of Jesus entered 
into the apostle's earliest Christian thinking. 
Stephen also represented Jesus as the Son of 
man, the Messianic designation of the prophecy 
of Daniel; and if we are right in regarding 
Stephen as St. Paul's first spiritual preceptor we 
can hardly err in claiming that the Jesus of the 
early days of the latter's Christian experience 
was likewise regarded as the "Son of man." 
Immediately after his conversion we find St. 
Paul preaching in the synagogues of Damascus 
that Jesus "is the Son of God" (Acts 9: 20). 

1 Meyer, Commentary on Acts. 



44 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

Here, then, is a further element in the apostle's 
early spiritual conception of Jesus. Christ is 
also the Ascended King to the young convert, 
as is obvious from the entire scope of the va- 
rious narrations of the conversion. He is also 
to the young convert the Universal Saviour, as 
appears from the divine word to Ananias, which 
must certainly have been directly communicated 
to St. Paul: "He is a chosen vessel unto me, to 
bear my name before the Gentiles and kings" 
(Acts 9: 15). To summarize, then, we find in 
the earliest conception of Christ in the mind of 
St. Paul subsequent to his conversion these 
notions: The Messiah of prophecy, the Right- 
eous One, the Son of man, the Son of God, the 
Ascended King, the Universal Saviour. What 
fundamental element of spiritual knowledge con- 
cerning Jesus Christ is here lacking? What 
factor is there in the definition of the nature and 
offices of Jesus Christ framed by the Westmin- 
ster divines sixteen centuries later that does not 
here appear in outline ? — " The only Redeemer of 
God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being 
the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, 
and continueth to be, God and man, in two dis- 
tinct natures, and one person, forever." 1 

1 Shorter Catechism, A. 21. 



THE FAITH OF ST. PAUL 45 

So much did the apostle probably know of 
Christ at the beginning of his Christian career. 
But was there a development in his knowledge 
of Christ from that point on ? Not, we hold, — 
as certain scholars, like Principal Jowett, for 
instance, would have it, — in the sense of a 
doctrinal movement from one position to a con- 
tradictory one. We look in vain for one view of 
Christ held and taught by St. Paul that is clearly 
at variance with any other view of his held at a 
different period on the same subject. The Christ 
of the Pastoral Epistles is the Christ of the 
Thessalonian Letters, or of The Acts. There 
is not the slightest clear evidence that St. 
Paul taught anything about Christ at one period 
that he denied at a later period. There are two 
sorts of doctrinal development. There may be 
an advance like that of the Copernican theory in 
astronomy over the Ptolemaic, — one scheme op- 
posing and supplanting another; but there may 
also be an advance like that of the Calculus over 
the primary manual of arithmetic, where there 
is expansion of knowledge, but no opposition. 
Now we hold that whatever advance there was 
in the course of the life of St. Paul in the matter 
of his faith was of the latter sort. It was 
simply in the direction of enlargement or fulfill- 



46 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

ment. That he grew in his apprehension of 
spiritual truth of which Christ was the sum we 
do not deny. St. Luke tells us that at Damascus 
he "increased the more in strength" (Acts 
9: 22); and the apostle says of himself that as 
a man he has ''put away childish things" 
(1 Cor. 13: 11), — he has grown spiritually from 
year to year. It must needs have been so, 
since none can escape the obligation to grow in 
grace and in knowledge, to leave the things 
that are behind, and to press forward to the 
things that are before. How, then, did Paul's 
knowledge of Christ increase ? We reply that 
his impressions of the perfections of Christ grew 
in vividness as time advanced; he penetrated 
ever nearer to the heart of the great mysteries of 
our religion; his realization of the wealth of the 
divine love enlarged constantly; his trust in the 
Redeemer deepened in intensity. To say this is 
to say that he was to the end a wide-awake be- 
liever. There is evidence of it all in the outer 
and inner elements of his history. 

" The thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the 
sun." ] 

But while a man is absolutely the servant of 

1 Tennyson, Locksley Hall. 



THE FAITH OF ST. PAUL 47 

the Spirit of God, as St. Paul was in his Christian 
days, his thought-widening will not set one of 
his decades into antagonism against another. 
The Holy Spirit widens us, but he does not 
divide us. 

Apparently from the ever memorable midday 
at Damascus until the final scene on the Ostian 
Road at Rome the Lord Jesus Christ formed 
the center of the apostle's thinking. Never was 
there a champion of the gospel who made more 
of Christ. The subject of his written teaching is 
always Christ, whomsoever he addresses and 
whatever his special motive in writing. For ex- 
ample: in the letters to the Thessalonians Christ 
is presented as Judge; in the letter to the Gala- 
tians he is presented as Deliverer from the law; 
in that to the Romans he is presented as Deliv- 
erer from guilt; in that to the Colossians he is 
presented as the Fullness of all things. But al- 
ways it is Christ who is presented, and with a 
passion of devotion and loyalty equaled in no 
other servant of Jesus. He is not a man of one 
book, but he is a man with one theme. That 
theme is Jesus — only Jesus. Truthfully might 
his words to the Corinthians describing Christ's 
supremacy in his message to them be taken 
as descriptive of his life thought: " I determined 



48 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

not to know anything among you, save Jesus 
Christ, and him crucified" (i Cor. 2: 2). Not 
man, not sin, not the divine decrees, not the Jew- 
ish Jehovah, but "God manifest in the flesh" 
stands invariably in clear outline before his eyes. 
His alpha and omega is 

" Christ — the one great word 
Well worth all languages in earth or heaven." 

Then who may hope adequately to tell of the 
intensity of the faith of this grandest of faith's 
heroes ? Never did a man give up so much 
under the inspiration of faith. Never did one 
better prove the reality of his faith by his sacri- 
fices. His faith was full-fledged at its birth, or 
it could not have led him as it did unhesitat- 
ingly, unfalteringly, to break at once, totally and 
forever, with his past. Friends, position, pride, 
ambition, advancement — all went by the board 
instantly at the summons of his faith in the 
Crucified and Ascended. Strong must be the 
faith that so completely lifts a man from one 
world into another. But a yet better test of 
faith is its ability to hold its possessor to the 
path along which it guides. It must rule might- 
ily when it gives so invincible a life purpose 
as it gave to St. Paul. And what a purpose! 



THE FAITH OF ST. PAUL 49 

Nothing less than to carry God's message of 
salvation, in the face of a thousand devils, to 
two continents! When, therefore, countless nat- 
ural dangers, human opposition, and persecution 
to the point of imprisonment and stripes, loomed 
up formidably, what must have been the faith 
of this warrior of God to enable him, not to 
submit in patience merely, but to " glory in 
tribulations," to rejoice in bearing in his body 
the marks of the Lord Jesus! Then, too, his faith 
gave forth an intenser glory as the candle of 
his life burned toward its socket; and so power- 
ful was its blaze that in its light he laughed at 
what has ever been to the many the king of 
terrors. 

With the faith of what soldiers on God's 
spiritual battlefields shall we compare the faith 
of St. Paul ? Shall we tell of the faith of Poly- 
carp, the Ephesian martyr; of Augustine, the 
brand snatched from the burning; of Bernard, 
the consecrated Middle-Age scholar; of Luther, 
the iron hammer of the Reformation; of John 
Knox, "who never feared the face of man"; of 
Wesley, the devoted; of Whitefleld, the eloquent; 
of Spurgeon, "the emperor of the nineteenth cen- 
tury pulpit " ? They all are as children in faith 
beside their principal! His faith excels theirs as 



50 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

the sun rules the stars in brightness. His faith 
is the one particular star before whose splendor 
all other stars pale in faith's firmament. 

Then when we contrast the faith of the great 
apostle with the faith of the average Christian 
of us, do we not contrast a Himalaya with a 
molehill, a giant with a pigmy, a sword of steel 
with a weapon of lath ? Yet, thanks be to God! 
faith as a grain of mustard seed saves; and the 
humblest believer may rejoice that, if his faith 
do not equal St. Paul's in intensity, yet it does 
in quality. Nor, since St. Paul was human like 
ourselves, is the measure of his faith above our 
possible attainment. St. Paul is our brother; a 
stronger brother, but nevertheless our kinsman. 
On the same roadway he and we rise to the 
unseen, — 

" The great world's altar stairs, 
That slope through darkness up to God." x 

1 Tennyson, In Memoriam. 



ST. PAUL THE PREACHER 



I venerate the man, whose heart is warm, 

"Whose hands are pure, whose doctrine and whose life 

Coincident, give lucid proof 

That he is honest in the sacred cause. 

— Cowper. 

The deep insight into truth, the happy faculty of imparting 
truth ; these two endowments together made up that which was 
essential to the prophet of the early church. — F. W. Robertson. 

But we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling-block, 
and unto Gentiles foolishness ; but unto them that are called, 
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wis- 
dom of God. — i Cor. i : 23, 24. 



Ill 

ST. PAUL THE PREACHER 

From the week of his conversion until his 
death the main business of St. Paul was to 
preach the "good news;" and as Saul the-king 
was a full head and shoulders taller than other 
men, so the great apostle overtops vastly all 
Christian preachers who follow him. It is all- 
important, then, in the process of getting ac- 
quainted with the character of St. Paul to deter- 
mine what he was as a preacher. 

Let us consider briefly his special preparation 
for preaching. As in the case of every warm- 
hearted convert, a zeal for souls was born in him 
with his faith. He embraced his first opportunity 
of telling others of his new-found Saviour. St. 
Luke tells us, speaking of the first days in Damas- 
cus after the conversion, that " straightway in the 
synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, that he is the 
Son of God" (Acts 9: 20). But almost imme- 
diately, with the growing sense of the vastness 
of his mission came the feeling that he needed 
53 



54 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

special training for his task. Hence he betook 
himself into a solitary place, probably "the 
region of Arabia Petrsea either south or east of 
Damascus." Years afterwards he tells the Gala- 
tians of the experience: "Immediately I con- 
ferred not with flesh and blood: neither went I 
up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles be- 
fore me: but I went away into Arabia" (Gal. 
i : 17). The inference is plain that his chief ob- 
ject in this journey was to equip himself for 
future service by communion with God. Possi- 
bly the step was determined by the example of 
Jesus, who after his baptism " was led up of the 
Spirit into the wilderness" for a season (Matt. 
4: 1). Then, too, we cannot be mistaken about 
the employment of his time during this Arabian 
period. Of course he searched the Scriptures to 
determine finally their teachings about Christ. 
Of course he reflected long and deeply upon the 
tremendous theme of Christ for the world. Of 
course he prayed much, seeking light upon his 
future path. Of course, also, God spake to him 
often through the divine Spirit. Are we not to 
believe, too, that it was at this time that he "re- 
ceived" directly from God the knowledge of 
Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, and the 
special information concerning the institution of 



ST. PAUL THE PREACHER 55 

the Lord's Supper, to which he refers in his First 
Epistle to the Corinthians? (1 Cor. 1 1 : 23 ff.). 
Are we carrying imagination too far in suppos- 
ing, also, that sacred eloquence — the ordinary 
rules governing effective preaching — occupied his 
attention somewhat at this juncture ? We need 
not suppose that he did not preach at all then, 
but only that the period was in the main one of 
preparation. Its duration is spoken of as "three 
years," but this may mean, according to the Jew- 
ish mode of reckoning, no more than one 
year and parts of two other years — say, two 
full years. It was a time when the eagle's 
wings were growing and strengthening prior to 
his long, sublime flight. 

Not, then, until a goodly portion of a two 
years' period had been spent in obscurity did St. 
Paul emerge as a full-fledged preacher. As a 
fresh convert he had "proclaimed Jesus, that he 
is the Son of God" — what any novitiate in God's 
school can and ought to do; but after his return 
to Damascus from the wilderness he "con- 
founded the Jews, . . . proving that this is 
the Christ" (Acts 9: 22), now revealing for the 
first time the skill of a master of the preacher's 
art. Have we not, too, in this example of his a 
good argument for a special training in divinity 



56 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

for those who are called to preach ? We may 
not, indeed, say that God never summons men 
from the shop or the field into the pulpit direct. 
There are men of remarkable native force, — like 
Cartwright, or Finney, or Moody, — who plainly 
have a gospel message for the world though they 
have never studied in a theological seminary; but 
they are to be regarded as exceptions. In ordi- 
nary cases Arabia must precede Antioch and 
Corinth. Without toil of intellect and search- 
ing of heart in the student epoch there will 
be little inspiration under the mantle of the 
prophet. Nor do we believe that the teacher 
of religious truth in any department can make 
a deep impression without serious preparation 
for his task. St. Paul in Arabia is an impress- 
ive example for the Sunday-school teacher, for 
instance, or even the leader of a prayer meet- 
ing. How dare we seek to instruct others in 
the name of Christ unless we ourselves have 
been well instructed ? Is it not trifling with im- 
mortal souls to pretend to teach others before we 
ourselves have had the vision of Christ which is 
vouchsafed only to those who "search the Scrip- 
tures " and besiege the throne of grace ? The 
words of one of our great American preachers, 
who has received his crown, deserve to be 



ST. PAUL THE PREACHER 57 

quoted. Says Dr. W. M. Taylor: "He who 
would preach to others must be much alone with 
his Bible and his Lord; else, when he appears 
before his people, he will send them to sleep 
with his pointless platitudes or starve them with 
his empty conceits. Get you to Arabia, then, ye 
who would become the instructors of your fel- 
low-men! Get you to the closet and the study! 
Give your days and nights to the investigation of 
this Book ; and let everything you produce from 
it be made to glow with a white heat in the 
forge of your own heart, and be hammered on 
the anvil of your own experience! " 1 

Only fragments of St. Paul's sermons and ad- 
dresses have been preserved, but they are suffi- 
cient, we must believe, to give us accurate 
knowledge as to the subject and principal ma- 
terial of his preaching. Among his discourses of 
which we have the summaries, are the sermon in 
Antioch in Pisidia, the sermon in Lystra, the talk 
to the Philippian jailer, the sermon in Thessalo- 
nica, the sermon in Athens, the words to the im- 
perfectly taught disciples in Ephesus, the parting 
address to the elders at Miletus, the address on 
the castle stairs in Jerusalem, the address before 
the Sanhedrin, the address before Felix, and the 

1 Paul the Missionary. 



58 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

defense before Agrippa. Do we err in saying 
that the keynote of his sole message, repeated on 
a hundred occasions, and with infinite variations 
of emphasis, is found in St. Luke's account of 
his visit to Athens, in the words "he preached 
Jesus and the resurrection " ? The first of his 
sermons of which we possess any portion, that 
in Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 1 3), may perhaps be 
regarded as a type of the Pauline sermon. As 
such it will repay careful attention. It reveals 
the following features: First, it was addressed 
primarily to the Jews ; it was delivered in a 
synagogue. Though the apostle was sent espe- 
cially to the Gentiles it appears always to have 
been his practice to offer salvation " to the Jew 
first," and then to the Greek. Again, its argumen- 
tative appeal was to the Scriptures. It assumed 
the absolute correctness of the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures. That Jesus is the Messiah was inferred 
from the history of the chosen people as un- 
folded in the sacred writings. There is no ques- 
tioning the fact that St. Paul accepted the Scrip- 
tures not as containing, but as being, the word 
of God. Furthermore, great emphasis was laid 
on the resurrection of Jesus. To the mind of the 
preacher his entire system stood or fell with this 
truth. "But God raised him from the dead — " 



ST. PAUL THE PREACHER 59 

this was the dominant and glad note of the 
sermon. Not a dead Christ, but a living Master, 
is the apostle's Lord. Still further, faith in Jesus 
Christ, as opposed to obedience to the law, was 
presented as the means of salvation. "By him 
every one that believeth is justified from all things, 
from which ye could not be justified by the law 
of Moses" (Acts 13: 39). Here, then, is the 
Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, so glori- 
ously unfolded later in the epistles to the Romans 
and to the Galatians. Finally, there was a de- 
mand for an unconditional surrender to Christ. 
The sermon ended with a word of solemn warn- 
ing. If the question be raised as to the leading 
elements of St. Paul's preaching, we think the 
answer may be found in this summary of the 
sermon in Antioch given in Acts 13. Indeed we 
have no doubt that one large purpose of the 
Holy Spirit in preserving for us so much of this 
sermon was to instruct gospel preachers in all the 
Christian centuries concerning the subject-matter 
and method of the preaching of Christ's ablest 
and wisest servant. 

Having thus briefly considered the material of 
St. Paul's preaching, let us turn now to the 
manner of it ; or, in other words, let us 
inquire concerning the natural and gracious 



6o THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

qualities of his personality as a preacher. 
We shall seek information on this line from 
various sources. 

Reference has already been made to the apos- 
tle's devotion to Christ ; but our study of his 
character as preacher requires us again to give 
attention to this characteristic. During his min- 
istry he appears never consciously to have al- 
lowed his will to conflict with that of Christ. 
Since the subject of his preaching always is the 
living Christ, we expect to find all his plans, his 
ambitions, his methods, as a preacher, derived 
from the authority of his ascended Lord. It is 
Christ who commissions him to preach; it is 
Christ who sends him forth to the Gentile 
world; it is Christ who regulates his plans, — 
as, for example, when he and his companions 
on their second missionary tour have decided 
to enter Bithynia, and the " Spirit of Jesus" suf- 
fers them not (Acts 16: 7); it is Christ who 
speaks to him in precious visions in Troas, in 
Jerusalem, on shipboard, and elsewhere; they 
are the presence and will of Christ that shape his 
every purpose, make him bold in the presence 
of enemies, give him eloquence everywhere in 
presenting truth, and endow him with a majestic 
resoluteness in his life task that reckons neither 



ST. PAUL THE PREACHER 61 

with disaster nor death. One who has written 
charmingly of the apostle thus describes this 
characteristic: "Christ burnt at the glowing 
center of his heart, and the radiance illumined 
the outermost circumference of his life. What 
gravitation is in the physical universe, holding 
everything in its place, that the love of Jesus 
was in his soul, regulating the lowliest as well as 
the loftiest of his actions." 1 In a word, his entire 
career as a preacher corresponds with his desig- 
nation of himself as "a bondservant of Jesus 
Christ" (Rom. i : i), and again, as an ambassador 
in behalf of Christ (2 Cor. 5: 20). Not alone in 
Corinth, but generally in his course as preacher, 
we must believe that he determined not to know 
anything "save Jesus Christ, and him crucified" 
(1 Cor. 2:2). In like manner will not the preacher 
of the twentieth century need to subject himself 
to the same divine Will that controlled this royal 
preacher of the first century, if he would be a 
true force in God's kingdom ? Young preachers 
are often, and rightly, urged by the fathers in 
the ministry to "preach Christ"; but if they 
learn first of all to obey Christ, or to live Christ, 
the quality of their message will take care of 
itself. Well is it for the preacher of any age if 

1 Dr. W. M. Taylor, Paul the Missionary. 



62 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

he can say with St. Paul, " For to me to live is 
Christ" (Phil, i: 21). 

We are struck also with the singleness of aim 
of this preacher. He tells the elders at Miletus 
that he holds not his life of any account as dear 
unto himself, so that he might accomplish his 
course (Acts 20: 24); and his words to the 
Philippians are very familiar: "Brethren, I count 
not myself yet to have apprehended: but one 
thing I do, forgetting the things which are be- 
hind, and stretching forward to the things which 
are before, I press on toward the goal unto the 
prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus " 
(Phil. 3: 13, 14). Every page of his history veri- 
fies the truth of these assertions. He is a man 
with a single definite life purpose. It is to win 
as many converts, and organize as many Chris- 
tian churches as God will permit, until he ex- 
changes the sword for the crown. We have 
known preachers with vacillating purposes. 
Now they have been on fire with evangelistic 
zeal; now, perhaps, they have turned their at- 
tention to some educational pursuit; now, again, 
they have been swayed by the ambition of writ- 
ing a successful novel; now, still further, they 
have dreamed of making a fortune through an 
invention or a speculative investment; and now, 






ST. PAUL THE PREACHER 6 3 

at last, they have turned to preaching again. Do 
not illustrations of this sort occur to all of us ? 
But there is nothing of this in St. Paul. He has 
but one employment. There are no cross-pur- 
poses in his mind. He knows that the gospel 
ministry is a jealous mistress. No preacher ever 
more clearly recognized the fact that life is too 
short to permit a large success where other em- 
ployments and other aims are allowed to inter- 
fere with the task of preaching the glorious 
gospel. It is true that he sometimes works at 
a secular trade; but it is plain that his tent- 
making is engaged in only as a necessity in his 
situation, an aid to the main business of his life. 
Another fundamental element of power in St. 
Paul as a preacher is his familiarity with the 
Scriptures. Like Apollos, though in a fuller 
sense, he is "mighty in the Scriptures" (Acts 
18: 24). It has been said of him that "he can 
hardly write five lines in succession without a 
biblical reference." His sermons and speeches, 
like his epistles, are charged with the spirit as 
they are infused with the language of the Old 
Testament. His complete respect for the Scrip- 
tures of the chosen people throws light upon the 
meaning to be attached to the term " works " in his 
arguments for justification by faith. Whatever 



64 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

it is in Judaism that stands in antithesis to faith 
in the plan of redemption, we may be sure, judg- 
ing from his reverence for the sacred oracles of 
Israel, that it is nothing pertaining to the essence 
of the Mosaic covenant. We may be sure that 
he finds justification by faith in Moses and the 
prophets, or he never would have found it at all. 
To him Christ is in the Old Testament. Christ 
is not the destruction but the fulfillment of the 
law — the law, that is, viewed as the changeless 
rule of practice from the changeless God. It has 
been said that St. Paul is often weak, according 
to the modern standard, in his arguments from 
Scripture, in that he mistakes rabbinic subtleties 
for genuine logic. Without dwelling on the 
point we venture the assertion that since his con- 
clusions are invariably sound it is more than pos- 
sible that his critics have missed the mark in 
attributing to him the attempt at a logical proc- 
ess where he has intended only illustration. Cer- 
tainly his acquaintance with the Scriptures is a 
mighty engine under his hand for the winning of 
converts. His first task is always to appeal to 
his own people, and his biblical learning enables 
him to meet them on their own ground; and it 
is doubtless true that in his time, as likewise it 
is in ours, the best instrument for conciliating and 



ST. PAUL THE PREACHER 65 

conquering the heathen mind was the written 
word of God. 

Well may the preacher of our time imitate the 
apostle in being "a workman that needeth not 
to be ashamed, handling aright the word of 
truth" (2 Tim. 2: 15). A preacher may be 
tolerated who has the mastery of ' ' little Latin 
and less Greek "; he may do good, if in the right 
place, though of weak presence and uncouth 
manner; he may win precious souls, though 
lacking the orator's gift; but he is a weak vessel 
indeed if he be ignorant of his Bible. I cannot 
forget the sorrowful tone of a certain good 
woman in speaking of a preacher of our ac- 
quaintance. "He is shamefully ignorant of the 
simplest features of the Bible," she said. No 
wonder that his ministry was unusually fruitless. 
On the other hand I have been told of a learned 
professor in an English university town who long 
listened with pleasure on Sundays to a plain man 
who was pastor of what our English cousins call 
a "dissenting chapel," and who when asked 
what it was in the preacher that attracted him, 
replied in effect: "Though he is unacquainted 
with science and literature, he knows his Bible. 
It is his knowledge of the word of God that 
attracts me to him." No man can be strong in 



66 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

the pulpit without knowing his Bible. And no 
man can be utterly weak there if he have the 
mastery of the Book. 

And then how pure is the humility of this first 
century preacher! Such expressions as "chief 
of sinners," and "least of the saints," which he 
applies to himself with evident sincerity, attest 
the lowliness of his spirit in the presence of the 
Master. His tone is never boastful. He glories 
only in the Cross. He is not inflated with self- 
importance. He is free from self-conceit. When 
he refers to his own experience or position it is 
never in order to win praise or honor for himself, 
but only to honor Christ. Farrar says with refer- 
ence to his letters that he "speaks but little, and 
never in detail, of the outward incidents of his 
life." There is the same sort of reticence in his 
sermons. He has mastered the lesson — and so 
few ever learn it! — that the best strength arises 
from the absence of self-assertion. "When I 
am weak, then am I strong" (2 Cor. 12: 10) is 
his testimony — a truth every preacher may well 
impress upon himself even in these times so 
marked by pride of opinion and vaunting self- 
glorification. The humblest are the strongest. 
As in the home not the sturdy, boisterous, half- 
grown youth is of greatest force, but the speech- 



ST. PAUL THE PREACHER 67 

less, helpless baby in the cradle, so they in God's 
household have lordliest power who are most 
plastic under the divine hand. Truly every 
worker for God should seek on his knees 

" Humility, that low, sweet root 
From which all heavenly virtues shoot." l 

Closely allied to his humility, though to be dis- 
tinguished from it, is the apostle's self-abandon. 
We refer to that evident disposition in his preach- 
ing to lose entire sight of possible consequences 
to himself, to overlook every thought of personal 
gain or advantage, through his interest in his 
message and his audience. He never poses. 
Hence we see no blush of confusion in the 
preacher's face as we listen to his sermon. We 
are aware of no stammering suggestive of a 
nervous fear of his own voice. Recently I heard 
a successful public speaker declare that if while 
speaking his thought turned upon himself for 
an instant, he was lost thereby to his speech. 
Every experienced speaker understands this. 
The thought must be entirely upon the subject 
and the hearers; and plainly the oratory of St. 
Paul is irresistible largely because his hearers 
think not of him, but of what he is saying. The 

1 Moore, Loves of the Angels. 



68 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

highest compliment I ever heard of England's 
greatest preacher in our generation was this: 
"When I came away I did not think of the 
greatness of Spurgeon, but of the loveliness of 
Christ." There is indicated this quality of self- 
abandon which St. Paul possessed in an eminent 
degree. " Not I, but Christ," is evident always as 
a feature of what we may term our apostle's 
pulpit demeanor. 

How intense, too, is the sympathy of this herald 
of the gospel! There are many evidences of his 
vast, unselfish love for men. It is indicated by 
the expressions of his fervent longing for the re- 
demption of his own nation. His heart's desire 
and his supplication to God for them is that they 
may be saved. It is indicated by the broad 
circle of his friendships. The many messages of 
love to individuals in the concluding chapter of 
the Epistle to the Romans affords an illustration, 
among others. It is indicated by the many mani- 
festations of his craving for affection. It is indi- 
cated by the tone of tender affection for his 
spiritual children, as apparent, for instance, in his 
sweet letter in behalf of the slave Onesimus, in 
his two letters to his "son" Timothy, and in his 
references to his friend and fellow-traveler, the 
"beloved physician." It is indicated by the pain 



ST. PAUL THE PREACHER 69 

he manifests at the backsliding of his converts; as 
illustrated, to look no further, in the letter to the 
Galatians, and in the first extant letter to the 
Corinthians. It is indicated by his occasional 
self-reproach after administering censure, — of 
which the second letter to the Corinthians 
affords illustrations, — from the fear lest he may 
have spoken too harshly. It is indicated by the 
entire tenor of his apostolic course; a career in 
which he spends and is spent for his fellow-men. 
It is indicated by his rich tributes to love, of 
which the noble lyric in his Corinthian letter 
affords the best illustration — words that could 
not have been written by one with an unsym- 
pathetic nature. His was plainly a large, warm 
heart. He felt for men as few preachers have 
felt. Sinner and saint — toward both his affec- 
tion went out in a full current. 

Here, then, is another source of his imperious 
power as a preacher. His very gestures and 
voice-tones must have lent themselves to his 
affectionate spirit. We feel sure that often there 
were tears in his voice. The best eloquence is 
conditioned on this element. If there be a broad 
sympathy in the heart it will show itself in the 
speech. If it be absent no mere flourish of 
rhetoric can supply its place. It is the force that 



7o THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

enabled Whitefield to sway the multitude at will; 
that gave an " seolian harp attachment" to the 
voice of Spurgeon; that won men to Wesley 
and to Beecher. I believe it to have been the 
chief secret of the power of Moody. A friend 
after hearing the great evangelist in my pulpit 
declared his conviction that it was his sympathy 
which enabled that rare preacher to speak so 
effectively. Every divinity student should be 
urged again and again to cultivate this quality, 
for it is the preacher's best gift. 

Then, who that has studied St. Paul has failed to 
discover his unfailing tact— another indispensa- 
ble quality in the true preacher. He never seems 
to speak an unsuitable word. He appears able 
to measure the peculiar need of his audience at a 
glance, and his speech is always seasoned with 
salt. Among the illustrations of this priceless 
quality are his varying accounts of his conver- 
sion, his tone being quite different when he ad- 
dresses on that subject a Roman official in Cses- 
area from that he has adopted in his defense 
before a Jewish audience in Jerusalem ; the skillful 
plan of his argument before the Sanhedrin; his 
speaking just the right word at the right moment 
to the ship's master, with a view to the safety of 
the voyagers; his discreet manner of handling 



ST. PAUL THE PREACHER 71 

the subject of slavery in the Epistle to Philemon; 
and lastly, his frequent apt quotations in his 
epistles, where "he falls back on ground that is 
common to himself and those whom he wishes 
to persuade." The chief illustrations of his tact 
in his sermons appear in the discourse in Athens, 
and in that in Lystra, where he approaches the 
gospel from the one point of view whence he 
can hope to carry his hearers with him. The 
evidence is ample that he never loses a point of 
advantage through a want of this all-important 
form of common sense which ever serves as a 
sort of prophetic insight in its happy possessor. 
Next to the want of consecration, and of the 
sympathy of which we have spoken, the lack of 
tact is doubtless responsible for more feebleness 
in the pulpit than any other one limitation. 
Many a preacher is mourning because his words 
are as blunted arrows, unconscious of the fact 
that his failures are chiefly due to his bungling 
way of approaching those to whom he ministers. 
He smiles when he should weep, he is solemn at 
the wrong moment; he is severe toward the 
sensitive, and lenient toward the utterly perverse. 
His themes are often ill-chosen. He shocks his 
best friends by his unhappy speeches, until his 
efforts are dreaded by those who have had a dire 



72 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

experience of his failing. Are there not many 
tactless preachers ? Is not the absence of tact 
the fly that spoils the richest ointment of their 
equipment ? Tact — it is the John the Baptist of 
the preacher's eloquence. 

Still further, St. Paul is characterized by im- 
mense earnestness. Says Dr. W. M. Taylor: 
"If ever man was in earnest, he was in earnest. 
Everything about him was intense. Festus might 
sneer at him as 'mad,' and his Corinthian antag- 
onists might despise him as ' beside himself,' but 
his was the madness of a holy" and intelligent 
zeal, the insanity of a benevolent and healthy 
enthusiasm." l "Always and overwhelmingly in 
earnest" is the comment of Farrar. His zeal is 
pronounced. We feel as we listen to him that 
here indeed is one who regards himself as a dying 
man preaching to dying men. Possibly he may 
never come this way again; hence he must con- 
centrate all the energy of his being on the present 
effort. He does nothing by halves. His work in 
presenting truth is never slipshod. We wonder 
at the force in him. It seems superhuman. It is 
enthusiasm, inspired by enormous faith in the 
efficacy of the Cross. 

We must next glance at the apostle's moral 

1 Paul the Missionary. 



ST. PAUL THE PREACHER 73 

courage. It has been questioned whether he pos- 
sessed much of what we term physical courage. 
His expression, "I die daily," the tone of his 
rehearsal of his remarkable hardships, his ac- 
count of his trepidation in Macedonia, — " with- 
out were fightings, within were fears " (2 Cor. 
7: 5), — are among the supposed evidences of his 
lack of the sort of courage we look for in the 
athlete or soldier. But if he did not ignore 
pain, if he instinctively shrank from physical 
peril, certainly his sublime moral courage held 
him sternly to the path of duty, at whatever 
cost of danger, and ranked him among the 
heroes of the ages. It would be easy to mul- 
tiply illustrations of this quality, but we must 
confine attention to the exhibitions of it in the 
line of his preaching. He is constantly preach- 
ing to unfriendly audiences. Without hesitation 
he repeatedly speaks for the Cross in the face of 
popular contempt. See him "alone" in Athens, 
for instance, preaching Christ before haughty 
scoffers. But the experience is repeated in well- 
nigh every place he visits. Not once but a hun- 
dred times does he reveal that highest form of 
courage which consists in defending the truth 
where it is unpopular. Such, though in a less 
degree, was the courage of preachers like Huss, 



74 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

and Wyclif, and Savonarola and George Fox. 
No age has altogether lacked men who have 
dared much in defense of right and truth. The 
world needs men of that stamp now. 

Finally, we must touch upon the cheerfulness 
of St. Paul — a valuable trait in the preacher al- 
ways, as it is a quality we have a right to expect 
in every child of grace. The apostle may have 
lacked humor, as Dr. Howson says 1 ; but he cer- 
tainly abounded in cheerfulness. He had his 
dark days, but always the clouds passed, and the 
sun of hope rose brighter than before, making his 
path glorious. We must regard the quality in 
him as a fruit of grace, rather than as a natural 
gift. If Christ had never claimed him we believe 
that his course would have ended in a night of 
sullen gloom and despair. As it was, the tone of 
good cheer in him became firmer, more gladsome, 
as the years sped. The indications of this are 
numerous. He is able to sing in the Philippian 
dungeon (Acts 16: 25); he speaks of "overflow- 
ing with joy" in affliction (2 Cor. 7: 4); he 
begs the Ephesians not to faint at his tribula- 
tions (Eph. 3:13); he writes in a happy strain 
to Philemon ; the tone of his Epistle to the 
Colossians is most sanguine; his sermons all 

1 The Character of St. Paid. 



ST. PAUL THE PREACHER 75 

breathe hopefulness, triumph, joyousness. Most 
striking of all, this cheerfulness of spirit in- 
creases toward the end, and the happiest words 
proceed from his prison, — nay, while he is un- 
der the growing shadow of his martyrdom. 
From his first Roman captivity he writes words 
like these : "I thank my God upon all my 
remembrance of you" (Phil. 1:3); "If there 
is therefore any comfort in Christ, if any con- 
solation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, 
if any tender mercies and compassions, fulfill 
ye my joy" (Phil. 2: 1); "I joy and rejoice 
with you all: and in the same manner do ye 
also joy, and rejoice with me" (Phil. 2: 18); 
"Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord" 
(Phil. 3: 1) ; ''Rejoice in the Lord alway : 
again I will say, Rejoice" (Phil. 4: 4). And we 
have all noticed the note of triumph in the epis- 
tles to Timothy, the sweetest at the last, which 
is well indicated in the joyous declaration: "I 
have fought the good fight, I have finished the 
course, I have kept thefaith: henceforth there is 
laid up for me the crown of righteousness " 
(2 Tim. 4: 7, 8). Never, indeed, was there a 
better example of what faith in Jesus can do 
to keep a man sweet and happy. Nothing in 
earth or hell can crush so complete a believer. 



76 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

Yea, "faithfulness can feed on suffering, and 
knows no disappointment." When, therefore, the 
preacher of these days of scant faith is depressed 
by worldliness and indifference, and inclined to 
deep melancholy by the vast suffering that is in 
the world, let him look to St. Paul, and his trials, 
and his cheerful heart, and let him, too, as at a 
new Market of Appius and Three Taverns, thank 
God and take courage. 

On the whole, shall we not term him the 
emperor of the Christian pulpit — this peerless 
preacher, of whom in an infinitely larger sense 
than of Wesley it could be said that the whole 
world was, and is, his parish ? 



ST. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 



And if the way seems rough, I only clasp 
The Hand that leads me, with a firmer grasp. 

— Annie C. Lynch. 

These are the two great types of strength which fill the 
earth — the Caesars and Napoleons claiming the earth for them- 
selves, and subduing it to their proud wills — the Pauls and Bon- 
ifaces and Xaviers and Eliots and Livingstones, claiming the 
earth for holiness, and subduing it to the will of God. . . . 
Our own dear faith has never, since she stood tiptoe with St. 
Paul upon the shore of Troas, ready to cross over into Europe, 
has never since then stood so ready for her work, " with loins 
girt up to run around the earth." — Phillips Brooks. 

Yea, making it my aim so to preach the gospel, not where 
Christ was already named, that I might not build upon another 
man's foundation. — Ro??ians ij ; 20. 



IV 

ST. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 

We are now more particularly to view St. Paul 
as the man of action. We are to study him as 
the explorer of new regions, and the founder of 
churches. Here we face the leading feature 
of his character and life work; for above all else 
he was a Christian missionary. Of all the mod- 
ern forms of Christian service, indeed, that of 
the foreign missionary corresponds most closely 
to the main business of the leading apostle. 
The young man or woman of our time who 
would follow most closely in the steps of 
St. Paul must choose the calling of the foreign 
missionary. 

Every other phase of the apostle's life was sub- 
ordinate to this. Are we interested in his work 
in Damascus, in Jerusalem, in Antioch ? It is to 
be looked on as preparatory to his work in Asia 
and Europe. Do we find him communing and 
consulting with other leaders of the apostolic 
Church — as at the Council of Jerusalem? Such 
79 



80 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

association is not to be understood save in the 
light thrown upon it by his missionary activities. 
Are we interested in his epistles, would we study 
his system of teaching ? We must bear in mind 
that the primary aim of these undying letters was 
to instruct those who had been recently con- 
verted under his missionary preaching, or to 
strengthen churches in the line of his missionary 
travels. None of his epistles are directed to 
home churches, like Jerusalem or Antioch. They 
all are to believers on Asiatic or European soil. 
Do we find rich spiritual profit in regarding the 
apostle as a man of study and prayer ? We must 
remember that his intellect and piety were de- 
voted chiefly to the furtherance of his missionary 
projects. As in securing a true photograph of a 
man's person you must have his face and not an 
inferior member of his body in the foreground, 
so in gaining a judgment concerning the charac- 
ter of St. Paul you must, in order to avoid a 
distorted and false picture of him, keep his mis- 
sionary aim and work in the center of your 
field of vision. 

His peculiar natural qualifications for the work 
of a missionary were various and important. 
His double citizenship, to which allusion has 
already been made, gave him a peculiar fitness 



ST. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 81 

for carrying the gospel into regions dotted over 
with Jewish synagogues, but under the control 
of the Roman government. Then, too, his 
knowledge of the Greek tongue, and his fine 
intellect, gave him access to every important 
circle in the empire; for Greek was to the civi- 
lized world of his day what French is to Europe 
in ours. Furthermore, he was one of those rare 
men in whom both the speculative and the active 
temperaments are largely developed. He was 
by nature both a thinker and a man of affairs. 
Ordinarily the man of deep reflection, the man 
who is able to add most largely to the world's 
wealth of ideas, is poorly equipped for taking the 
lead in great practical undertakings; and on the 
other hand, the great men of practical enterprise 
are seldom preeminently great as thinkers. For 
instance, how difficult it would be to think of 
Tennyson or Carlyle as successful leaders in the 
British Parliament, or to think of great adminis- 
trators or captains like Peabody or General 
Grant as distinguished in poetry or philosophy. 
But the ideal missionary will be strong on both 
these lines. He will be powerful in the sphere 
of meditation and reflection, and he will be 
equally great as the man of quick, accurate de- 
cision, and sharp, decisive action, — for mission- 



82 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

ary fields, like battlefields, are always places for 
wise generalship. Now St. Paul was neither a 
bookworm nor a mere instrument to execute 
other men's ideas. He was forceful in both 
thought and affairs. His modern counterparts 
in this regard are, of course, men of the type of 
Adoniram Judson, or Alexander Duff, or Coleridge 
Patteson. 

But still further, he had what has been termed 
the pioneer spirit, a genius for penetrating into 
unworked fields, at whatever cost of hardship or 
suffering. This must ever be regarded as the 
most striking natural element of the person who 
may be styled "a born missionary." Without 
the attachment of a distinct spiritual purpose it is 
the trait that forms the basis of character of the 
great explorer, — like Columbus, or Hudson, or 
Sir John Franklin, or Nansen; or of the great ad- 
venturer, like Sir Francis Drake, or Captain Cook, 
or Daniel Boone. Some men cannot live in wide 
separation from friends and home comforts. 
They are depressed by the solitude, and pros- 
trated by the sense of danger, in wild, untrodden 
regions. The process of " roughing it" in dis- 
tricts remote from the place of their nativity un- 
nerves and debilitates them. Such men, what- 
ever their qualifications in other respects, are not 



ST. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 83 

marked by nature for the calling of the mission- 
ary. But St. Paul was a born pioneer, and thus 
far was a born missionary. He has been in this 
respect happily compared to Dr. Livingstone. 
The words of Dr. Stalker deserve quoting 
here: ''In modern times no missionary has had 
this consecrated spirit of adventure in the same 
degree as our lamented hero, David Livingstone. 
When he first went to Africa he found the mis- 
sionaries clustered in the south of the continent, 
just within the fringe of heathenism; they had 
their houses and gardens, their families, their 
small congregations of natives; and they were 
content. But he moved at once away beyond 
the rest into the heart of heathenism, and dreams 
of more distant regions never ceased to haunt 
him, till at length he commenced his extraordi- 
nary tramps over thousands of miles where no 
missionary had ever been before; and when 
death overtook him he was still pressing for- 
ward. Paul's was a nature of the same stamp, 
full of courage and adventure. The unknown in 
the distance, instead of dismaying him, drew 
him on." 1 Modern missions present many illus-* 
trations of this fundamental natural trait of the 
true missionary. Eliot, Brainerd, Paton, and Dr. 

1 Life of St. Paul, p. 112. 



84 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

Good, are names that will occur to every student 
of latter-day Christian missions. 

It must be added to the statement of these 
natural qualifications of the apostle for his mis- 
sionary enterprises that he believed in a mission- 
ary Christ. To him God was the Sovereign of 
the whole earth. Christ died, according to his 
thinking, not for a church or a class, but for the 
world. He saw that the gospel was to be 
preached to the Jew first, but also to the Greek 
— that is, to the entire non-Jewish world. With- 
out doubt he was aware of the words of the 
Lord, "The field is the world" (Matt. 13:38), 
"Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the 
nations" (Matt. 28: 19). Having accepted the 
truth of the divinity of Christ, and the design of 
the atonement, his broad and logical mind recog- 
nized clearly that it would be an insult to divine 
grace practically to limit the gospel to a particular 
section. If, then, the gospel was for the entire 
earth, he as a man of burning zeal and courage 
must needs do his full share, whatever it chance 
to be, to carry it abroad. 

It is true that the Holy Ghost appointed St. 
Paul to his work as a missionary. But we hold 
that the Spirit of God chose him thus because he 
was the right man for the work to be done. The 



ST. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 85 

Holy Spirit, we believe, never calls men arbitra- 
rily into any field of action. There are young 
men about us who may have been called by the 
Holy Spirit to missionary endeavor; but it is safe 
to conclude that the call is not his that is im- 
agined to be so by one who has no striking apti- 
tude for the missionary's peculiar work. May 
we venture to suggest certain natural qualifica- 
tions without which, with possibly rare excep- 
tions, no man should become a foreign mission- 
ary in our generation ? Among them are a sound 
physical constitution, a certain facility in linguis- 
tic study, a degree of fondness for teaching, a 
measure of social independence, inborn unselfish- 
ness, and the humanitarian temper. These 
qualities are fundamental. Apparently St. Paul 
possessed them all. 

Let us attempt to gain a bird's-eye view of the 
apostle's missionary activities, to discover what 
they involved to him, and to apprehend their 
main results. The apostle himself speaks of 
missionary labors, which must have been quite 
prolonged, in Syria and Cilicia (Gal. 1: 21). 
Then St. Luke in The Acts presents an account, 
with more or less detail, of three missionary 
tours of the apostle, together with the account of 
a journey made by him, while a prisoner, from 



86 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

Palestine to Italy. In addition to these, scholars 
are mainly agreed that during a period of two or 
three years intervening between a first and 
second imprisonment in Rome he made a final 
missionary tour, unrecorded in The Acts, in 
which he visited, and labored in, at least Asia, 
Crete, Macedonia and Achaia. 1 The second of 
these tours of The Acts appears to have been the 
most fruitful. Stalker refers to it as a journey 
" perhaps the most momentous recorded in the 
annals of the human race." 2 The record by St. 
Luke of these important missionary labors appears 
in Acts 13: 1 to 21 : 15. 

Perhaps it was in the year of our Lord 46 
when St. Paul, Barnabas, and Mark, started forth 
from Antioch on the apostle's first formal gospel 
tour toward the west. They proceeded to Seleu- 
cia, the seaport of Antioch, and thence sailed to 
the island of Cyprus. They preached in the 
synagogue in Salamis, at the eastern end of the 
island, and thence proceeded, probably preach- 
ing as they went, to the town of Paphos, at 
the island's western extremity. Thence they 
crossed to the mainland, into the province of 
Pamphylia, and came to the town of Perga, 



1 The genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles depends on such a tour. 
3 Life of St. Paul. 



ST. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 87 

where Mark deserted his principals and returned 
to Jerusalem. Thence the two missionaries went 
to Antioch of Pisidia, where St. Paul preached his 
first missionary sermon of which we have any 
account. After leaving Antioch they labored in 
Iconium, and afterwards preached in turn in 
Lystra and Derbe. From Derbe the mission- 
aries retraced their steps, going to Lystra, to 
Iconium, to Antioch, to Perga. Thence they 
went to Attalia, whence they sailed to Antioch 
in Syria, their starting point. The journey had 
occupied probably not less than three years, and 
the travelers had covered approximately fifteen 
hundred miles, about one-half on land and one- 
half on water. According to recent scholarship, 
which I accept, Antioch of Pisidia, Iconium, Lys- 
tra, and Derbe, mark the points of the "churches 
in Galatia" to which the Epistle to the Galatians 
was afterwards directed. 1 

The second journey began a year or two 
later, about the year 50. On this tour St. Paul 
was accompanied by Silas of Jerusalem. The 
missionaries started from Antioch in Syria, 
where the first tour began, and proceeded 
overland into Asia Minor, visiting on their way 

*See Ramsay's St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen. So also 
Bacon. Also (formerly) Weizsacker, Hausrath, etc. 



88 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

the churches already founded in Syria and Cili- 
cia — the latter St. Paul's native province. Thence 
they came to Derbe, and then to Lystra. In the 
latter place the apostle discovered Timothy, there- 
after his faithful coworker. Doubtless on his 
way he revisited Antioch and Iconium, though 
we are not expressly told that such was the 
case; and being supernaturally directed not to 
labor in the provinces of Asia and Bithynia, he 
and his companions came to Troas, on the 
/Egean Sea, over against what is now south- 
eastern Turkey. From that point they crossed 
over into Europe, — the most momentous act, 
outside the earthly life of our Lord, in all Chris- 
tian history. They founded a church in Philippi, 
and then proceeding to Thessalonica they founded 
a church there. Then they labored for a time, 
successfully, in Bercea. Next, leaving Silas 
and Timothy in Beroea, St. Paul went alone to 
Athens, where he appears to have accomplished 
little in the way of direct results, though we 
could ill spare the great sermon the visit occa- 
sioned. From Athens the apostle went to Cor- 
inth, where he founded a church, and where he 
remained in most profitable work for a year 
and a half. While here he probably wrote his 
first two epistles, the first and second missives 



ST. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 89 

to the Thessalonians. From Corinth he pro- 
ceeded to the capital of the province of Asia, 
the great city of Ephesus, where, however, he did 
not attempt a prolonged work. Promising his 
hearers there to return to them, he sailed thence 
to Csesarea, and from Csesarea he returned to the 
starting point, Antioch. He had covered a dis- 
tance of somewhat more than two thousand 
miles, 1 and occupied a period of perhaps two 
and a half years. 

The third gospel journey began, according to 
my reckoning, in the year 54. The apostle pro- 
ceeded overland from Antioch through the south- 
ern tier of provinces in Asia Minor until he came 
to Ephesus, where he tarried three years, and 
where the most important part of the work of 
the journey was accomplished. We must date 
the Epistle to. the Romans, and those to 
the Corinthians, from about this period. His 
work in Ephesus ended, the apostle proceeded 
into Macedonia, and thence into Greece. From 
the city of Philippi he sailed back across the 
/Egean to Troas, where he preached, and whence 
he started on his journey homeward. We re- 
gard the sketch of this gospel tour as ending 



1 Professor Gilbert estimates the distance as twenty-five hundred miles.- 
Student's Life of Paul, p. 135. 



9 o THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

with the account of his arrival in Jerusalem. 
The time required for the events of the journey 
could hardly have been less than four years. The 
distance traveled may be roughly estimated 
as two thousand miles, partly on land and 
partly on water. 

I pass by in this description the details of the 
apostle's long voyage in captivity to Italy, with 
its manifold perils and adventures including its 
shipwreck; and we shall not enter the field of 
conjecture concerning the fourth missionary jour- 
ney, of which St. Luke tells us nothing. If we 
reckon the voyage to Rome as being two thou- 
sand miles, and if we reckon the undescribed 
tour as being fifteen hundred miles in length, 
then we conclude that this matchless missionary 
traveled in the course of his missionary under- 
takings, together with his journey as a prisoner, 
not less than nine thousand miles, by land and 
by sea. The time from the beginning of the 
first to the close of the third journey I judge to 
have been about twelve years. From the begin- 
ning of his missionary career until his death was 
a period of about twenty years, assuming that 
he received his crown in a. d. 67 or 68. 

Nine or ten thousand miles of travel during 
twenty years does not sound very formidable to 



ST. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 91 

the seasoned traveler of these days of ocean 
palaces and transcontinental express trains; but 
in trying to present to our minds the difficulties 
and discomforts of St. Paul's journeyings, we 
must bear in mind how different were the condi- 
tions of travel in the Roman Empire of the first 
century from those with which we are familiar. 
Probably the main highways — the large arteries 
of commerce and travel — were good, for the 
Romans were excellent road builders. But the 
rivers were imperfectly bridged, and often were 
to be crossed only by fording. There were 
beasts of prey in the forests that have since dis- 
appeared from those regions. The mountain 
passes were infested with brigands. All travel- 
ers in Asia Minor for centuries have complained 
of the excessive summer heat, the intolerable 
dust, and the pestiferous stinging insects. And 
what we term "hotel accommodations" along 
the great roads must have been, according to our 
notion, exceedingly primitive, where they were 
not altogether wanting. Travelers must have 
been constantly in danger of suffering from 
hunger. Add to all this the fact that the apostle 
must have gone about from town to town almost 
entirely on foot, and consider also the inferior 
methods of navigation in his time, long before 



92 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

the use of the chart and mariner's compass, 
and we may begin to get a faint impression of 
the meaning of the nine or ten thousand miles of 
the apostle's travels over land and sea. 

We have been considering first century travel 
in its most favorable light. It would seem to be 
difficult enough for one who met only good will 
from his brother beings along the way. But we 
know that St. Paul found his worst difficulties in 
travel in the form of human hostility. In nearly 
every place in which he preached he sooner or 
later met with intense opposition. Again and 
again Jews and pagans fell upon him with viru- 
lent hatred, and dogged him with deadly perse- 
cution. Now he was driven ignominiously out 
of a city; now he was hounded by the oriental 
mob, as by the ''wild beasts" at Ephesus; now 
he was stoned, and dragged half dead over the 
rough ground, as at Lystra; now he was beaten 
by Roman lictors, as at Philippi, or by the 
officials of the synagogue; now he was assailed 
by ungodly tradesmen like Demetrius, whose 
craft was endangered by his pure teaching; now 
he was met with cynical contempt or laughter, 
as in Athens; now he was cast into a loathsome 
prison cell. The most of his hardships during 
these journeys St. Luke passes over in silence, since 



ST. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 93 

the historian aims to magnify the grace of God 
rather than to win sympathy for his hero; and 
the apostle in his own writings only once fully 
lifts the veil from the appalling list of his suffer- 
ings as a missionary of the Cross. To begin to 
get a full appreciation of the hardships he met 
with as a missionary we must read his words in 
the Second Epistle to the Corinthians: "Of the 
Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. 
Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I 
stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a 
day have I been in the deep; in journeyings 
often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in 
perils from my countrymen, in perils from the 
Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the 
wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among 
false brethren; in labor and travail, in watchings 
often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in 
cold and nakedness" (2 Cor. 11:24-26). Pass- 
ing over all other forms of suffering here men- 
tioned, consider the fact that he received a Jewish 
scourging five times, and a Roman scourging 
three times. One Roman scourging was enough 
to constitute a man a martyr. The victims of 
Jewish scourgings not infrequently died under 
the infliction on the bare back of the thirty-nine 
cruel lashes of the twisted six strands of leather 



94 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

in the hands of the muscular cha^an of the 
synagogue. 

Yet all these sufferings were lightly borne by 
the great apostle. So great was his spiritual ex- 
altation that he seems almost to have been oblivi- 
ous of his sufferings when he experienced them, 
and he refers to them afterwards with joy rather 
than with shame. We recall Tertullian's words, 
"The leg feels nothing in the stocks when the 
soul is in heaven." And truly remarks Dr. 
Farrar, "A much lower exaltation than that of 
the apostle would rob anguish of half its sting." 
What a lesson for all Christian sufferers in the 
gentle, sweet spirit of this apostle! Shall we 
servants of God have the face to complain of our 
treatment, in this luxurious age, when we con- 
trast our little sufferings with those of St. Paul ? 

We must briefly touch upon the results of St. 
Paul's missionary enterprises. Of course he won 
many converts. How many is a matter of con- 
jecture. Renan thinks they were not more than 
one thousand altogether. Probably that view is 
far too conservative. But the most of us would 
think it glory enough to be able to win one thou- 
sand men for Christ in a lifetime. But the su- 
preme glory of St. Paul's work was that its fruits 
lasted after his departure. He was a founder of 



ST. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 95 

churches. Many of these continued in power 
for centuries. We classify them as follows: 
First, those indicated in The Acts as organized by 
him. Among these are the churches in Galatia, — 
Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, — and those 
of Philippi, Thessalonica, Beroea, Corinth, and 
Ephesus. " He founded no church in Athens, but 
there — it may be under the fostering charge of 
the converted Areopagite — a church grew up. In 
the next century it furnished to the cause of 
Christianity its martyr bishops and its eloquent 
apologists." So says Dr. Farrar; 1 but we think 
the Athenian church is to be ascribed, at least indi- 
rectly, to the influence of the apostle. Second, the 
churches with which we know St. Paul was con- 
nected, judging from his epistles, and which we 
must regard as in some sense arising from his 
labors. The church in Colossae and the churches in 
Crete are illustrations. Third, the churches re- 
ferred to elsewhere in the New Testament than 
in The Acts or the Pauline letters, but which we 
have reason to ascribe directly or indirectly to his 
efforts. For instance, the seven churches of the 
Apocalypse. Dr. Ramsay thinks, and with good 
reason as we judge, that these seven churches 
sprang into being as a fruit of the apostle's three 

1 The Life and Work of St. Paul. 



96 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

years' labor in Ephesus. x Fourth, churches 
founded by the apostle of which we have no rec- 
ord. That there were churches of this class we 
are certain. He did foundation work, — for in- 
stance, in Syria and Cilicia, — which is described 
to us only in the most general terms. It deserves 
notice that, generally speaking, the Pauline 
churches were established on the great lines of 
communication in the empire and at strategic 
points; and therefore they were adapted to be 
lights on a hill, throwing their gracious beams 
far and wide. An important lesson is here for 
all pioneers in gospel work. 

In general terms it may be said that the great 
result of St. Paul's missionary labors was the 
final establishment of Gentile Christianity. For 
a time it was a question whether Christianity was 
to be regarded as a branch of Judaism, with its 
narrow sectionalism, and hedged about with an 
enslaving ceremonialism, or whether it was to 
spread out broadly as the universal world reli- 
gion. St. Paul stood for the broader conception 
of our holy faith. The battle was fiercely waged 
between him and the Judaizing Christians, but he 
won the day; and the chief factor in establish- 
ing his victory was the practical fruitage of his 

1 St. Paul, the Traveler and the Roman Citizen. 




ST. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 97 

missions in the heart of the Roman world. As 
under his influence church after church sprang 
into being out of non-Jewish materials, the logic 
of events gradually proved too much for Jew- 
ish superstition and narrowness as control- 
ling elements in the Church of the universal 
Redeemer. 

The results of St. Paul's missions are of 
vital interest to us. We of the western world 
owe an incalculable debt of gratitude to him for 
carrying the gospel into Europe. What if St. Paul 
had traveled with the gospel toward the East in- 
stead of toward the West ? What if on the 
shore of the /Egean he had disobeyed the invita- 
tion of the man from Macedonia? You and I 
might in that event at this hour be prostrate be- 
fore images of Buddha, or be burning incense to 
the shade of Confucius; or worse still, we might 
be painted savages, like the aboriginal Scots and 
Angles. In that event China and India might 
now be sending Christian missionaries to us, 
instead of our sending ambassadors of the Cross 
to them. "Providence conferred on Europe a 
blessed priority, and the fate of our continent 
was decided when St. Paul crossed the y^Egean." 
In view, therefore, of this undeniable fact how 
powerfully gratitude to God for the Christian 



98 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

salt that has healed the streams of the history of 
western civilization should impel us in our turn 
to send the glorious gospel to the spiritually 
destitute in distant lands! 

Indeed, not the least of the blessings en- 
joyed by the Church at this hour, which Chris- 
tians may thank God for, is the missionary spirit 
Christ's people have learned from St. Paul. 
When toward the close of the last century the 
beginning of a missionary revival arose in the 
churches of England and America, the move- 
ment was simply a return to first principles. It 
was a new recognition of the meaning of St. 
Paul's work viewed in the light of the univer- 
sality of the spirit of Jesus. Because we believe 
in Christ we believe in St. Paul; and because we 
believe in St. Paul we believe in Christian mis- 
sions; and because we believe in missions woe 
to us if we do not give, every one of us, 
thought, sympathy, prayer, and practical help, 
to the gospel agencies of the kingdom of God in 
every land! Under God it is due to St. Paul that 
the Church of the everlasting Jehovah 

" Like a mighty army " 

is moving, gradually but invincibly, against the 
ignorance, unbelief, and sin, of the world's 
heathenism. 



ST. PAUL THE PASTOR 



LofC. 



In his duty prompt at every call, 

He watch'd, and wept, and felt, and pray'd for all. 

— Goldsmith. 

Happy the faithful pastor, who, in his flesh, perpetuates Thy 
sacrifice and Thy conflict ! While he struggles and groans, I 
see him in my visions, hidden in Thy bosom, as on the day of 
the funeral banquet him whom Thou lovedst. — Vinet. 

And I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. — 
2 Cor. 12 : ij. 



ST. PAUL THE PASTOR 

We proceed to view the apostle as a Christian 
pastor— to inquire in what spirit and manner he 
discharged the duty of practical oversight of the 
churches to which he was officially related. 

The distinction between pastoral work and 
preaching is practical and popular rather than 
logical; but nevertheless it is sufficiently clear to 
warrant separate treatment of the two functions 
in a study of a career so rich in activity as that 
of St. Paul. We often hear the expression, con- 
cerning a clergyman, " He is a good preacher, 
but a poor pastor," or the reverse; and occasion- 
ally, "He is able both as preacher and pastor; " 
and it is this sense of the term pastor that we are 
here to employ. It is that phase of the apostle's 
service we are to consider that is indicated, for 
example, when St. Luke tells us of St. Paul and 
his companion that at the close of the first mis- 
sionary tour they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and 
Antioch, "confirming the souls of the disciples, 



102 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

exhorting them to continue in the faith" (Acts 
14:22); or when he quotes St. Paul's sugges- 
tion at the beginning of the second tour: ''Let 
us return now and visit the brethren in every 
city wherein we proclaimed the word of the 
Lord, and see how they fare" (Acts 15: 36). 
Texts like these introduce us to what may be 
termed, perhaps rather loosely, the pastoral work 
of St. Paul. 

Of the apostle's genius for organization I have 
already spoken; and hence, to avoid repetition, I 
shall not speak of that quality in the present con- 
nection. There remain to be considered the 
apostle's views concerning the pastoral function; 
his relation to his brother ministers; his manage- 
ment of church finances; his attitude toward the 
sacraments; his ideas concerning church dis- 
cipline; his practice of pastoral visitation; and 
his practical dealing with various classes of weak 
or troubled believers. The thoughtful consider- 
ation of topics like these must be of vast and 
permanent interest not only to officials of Chris- 
tian churches, but also to Christians in general. 

It is the infinite good fortune of the Church of 
Christ that St. Paul has left on record, in the 
pastoral epistles, his own views concerning the 
well-equipped pastor and his tasks ; and we 



ST. PAUL THE PASTOR 103 

feel sure that this body of teaching corresponds 
to the writer's own character and habits as a 
pastor, — that the best of pastors reveals himself 
in his instruction concerning the ideal pastor. 
What, then, are the leading qualities of the faith- 
ful pastor, according to the letters to Timothy 
and that to Titus ? 

He must, in the first place, be wholly loyal to 
Christ. That is assumed throughout. If he be 
true he will be " a good minister of Christ Jesus, 
nourished in the words of the faith, and of the 
good doctrine" (1 Tim. 4: 6). He should grow 
in Christlikeness, — "be strengthened in the 
grace that is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 2: 1). He 
must believe on that Person whom the apostle 
has adored. The under shepherd the apostle in- 
structs is a "true child after a common faith" 
(Titus 1 : 4). Christ must have absolute do- 
minion in the heart of the true pastor. Next, 
the pastor should possess strength of character. 
He should be what we term "a strong man." 
This involves a comprehensive knowledge of 
the Scriptures. The man who is strong as a 
pastor will "give diligence to present" himself 
"approved unto God, a workman that needeth 
not to be ashamed, handling aright the word of 
truth" (2 Tim. 2: 15). He will not confuse 



104 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

human trivialities with the solemn instruction 
of Scripture. He will "shun profane bab- 
blings" (2 Tim. 2: 16). He will be built on too 
vast a scale to bother over the mythical in Chris- 
tian history or waste time over matters of insig- 
nificant moment; he will not "give heed to fables 
and endless genealogies" (1 Tim. 1: 3, 4). As 
he advances in spiritual knowledge he will grow 
far above the spirit of pettiness — a fault that has 
proved a snare to thousands in pastoral work. 
Again, the pastor of whom St. Paul approves 
must be exemplary in domestic and neighbor- 
hood relations. He must be a model of peace in 
his home and community; his deportment to- 
ward women must be strictly dignified and 
pure; he must rule his own children well; he 
must be of a genial hospitality; he must be 
generous and open-handed; and he must keep 
his personal character in every respect above 
suspicion (1 Tim. 3: 1-7; Titus 1: 6-8). Then, 
furthermore, the pastor who understands his 
place must uphold dignity and reverence in 
public worship. He will instruct men to pray 
"lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dis- 
puting" (1 Tim. 2:8-12). He will refuse to 
permit irregular or questionable proceedings in 
Christian assemblies over which he presides. 



ST. PAUL THE PASTOR 105 

In other words he will himself be solemnized in 
church or chapel by the knowledge that "the 
Lord is in his holy temple" (Ps. 11: 4); and 
with that spirit flippancy and sensational speech 
are clearly inconsistent. Still further, the ideal 
pastor will be a man of wise courage and honest 
though tactful plainness of speech. It is a pastor 
speaking to a pastor who manfully declares, 
"God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness" 
(2 Tim. 1 : 7). There are times when the conse- 
crated pastor will "reprove, rebuke, exhort" 
(2 Tim. 4:2). Considering a certain class — 
"unruly men, vain talkers and deceivers" (Titus 
1: 10) — a class Ian Maclaren has called "church 
mutineers " — there are times when the strong pas- 
tor must needs "reprove them sharply" (Titus 
1 : 13). Admitting that this duty is to be dis- 
charged advisedly and tactfully, we must yet al- 
low that there is sometimes occasion in the pastor 
for righteous indignation vigorously expressed. 
Finally, the pastor who is approved of God will 
be strictly impartial as between different classes, 
socially considered. Pastor Timothy is told that 
they are false shepherds who suppose that 
"godliness is a way of gain" (1 Tim. 6: 5), and 
he is instructed to "charge them that are rich in 
this present world, that they be not high- 



106 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

minded" (i Tim. 6: 17). If he and other pas- 
tors are the true servants of Jesus Christ, they 
will not cringe before wealth or social position. 
Yet they are not to assume, on the other hand, 
that wealth and rank necessarily involve enmity 
to God. The correct attitude of the spiritual 
guide is not opposition to any class, but a kindly 
impartiality. 

These are among the principles set forth by 
the apostle in the pastoral epistles for the guid- 
ance of the preacher in pastoral service; and 
their enunciation clearly throws light on the 
author's own character. There never was a 
more subjective writer than St. Paul; never was 
it easier than with his words to measure a man 
by the product of his pen. And how much in 
these three letters needs to be taken to heart by 
the Christian pastors of our own time! 

The foregoing has prepared us to consider 
what the apostle was as a pastor, as shown by 
St. Luke's record of his pastoral career, and by 
the tone of his pastoral counsels indicated in the 
epistles other than the three of which we have 
spoken. 

It is doubtless correct to classify with the pas- 
toral duties of a Christian minister those obliga- 
tions and services which he owes to his brethren 



ST. PAUL THE PASTOR 107 

of the ministry. Therefore it pertains to our sub- 
ject to inquire concerning St. Paul's relation to 
his fellow-ministers. We discover three leading 
facts as to that relation. First, the apostle was 
never abjectly subject to the methods and views 
of brother ministers. St. Peter, for instance, has 
preceded him in the apostolic order; yet St. Paul 
never appears to have regarded him as occupying 
an official position superior to his own. On the 
contrary, in view of his independent call to his 
office, his originality of mind, and his special de- 
partment of work, he not only refused to attrib- 
ute infallibility to St. Peter, but he reserved the 
right to call in question the wisdom and even the 
moral correctness, on occasion, of that apostle. 
On at least one occasion he " resisted" his fellow 
"to the face" (Gal. 2: 11). We are not to un- 
derstand by this that any lack of kindly consid- 
erateness or gracious courtesy characterized our 
apostle ever in his bearing toward St. Peter, or 
toward the other apostles, but simply that he did 
his own thinking, and that, with no disrespect 
for others, he regarded no man as his lord, save 
Jesus only. Second, it appears that the apostle 
demanded a high ideal of moral qualities, partic- 
ularly of courage, in his fellow-ministers, as is 
shown in his treatment of John Mark at the begin- 



108 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

ning of the second missionary journey. He had 
scant patience with chicken-heartedness, or spir- 
itual effeminacy, in fellow-laborers in Christ's 
vineyard. And third, he had respect for the au- 
thority of the Church as a centralized body. He 
was no exponent of independency. He and 
Barnabas accepted official indorsement from the 
Church at large acting through the three leading 
apostles, Peter, James, and John. He took part 
in the proceedings of the so-called Jerusalem 
Council, and he respected its deliverance. On. 
his journey, following that convention, to the 
cities of Asia Minor he "delivered them the de- 
crees for to keep, which had been ordained of 
the apostles and elders that were at Jerusalem " 
(Acts 16: 4). From all of which we see that the 
apostle was as free from the prelatical spirit, on 
the one hand, as he was from that of the sepa- 
ratist, on the other. We cannot conceive of 
such a mind cribbed and cabined in the office of 
a parish priest of the Church of Rome; nor can 
we think of so human and affectionate a nature 
working for Christ apart from the official sanction 
of an organized company of believers. 

But it is not my purpose to discuss here mooted 
questions of church government. Nor may I 
enlarge upon the lessons suggested by St. Paul's 



ST. PAUL THE PASTOR 109 

bearing toward his brethren in the ministry, for 
the guidance of Christian clergymen of our time 
in corresponding relations. Such lessons are, 
however, unmistakable and valuable. 

We next approach the topic of the apostle's 
relation to church finances. In addition to the 
references to this matter in The Acts we find more 
or less extended accounts of his dealing with 
beneficence in several of his epistles, — for in- 
stance, in 1 Cor. 16, 2 Cor. 9 and Romans 15. 
St. Paul believed that the pastor of a church was 
entitled to temporal support from the people to 
whom he ministered. He compares his work to 
that of the soldier. Both are entitled to be paid 
for their labor. "What soldier ever serveth at 
his own charges?" he asks of the Corinthians. 
Further on he adds, "If we sowed unto you 
spiritual things, is it a great matter if we shall 
reap your carnal things?" (1 Cor. 9: 7-14). 
Support from the Church is the pastor's right. 
In one case, at least, the apostle accepted such 
support. He acknowledges to the Philippians 
their contributions to supply his need : "For even 
in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my 
need" (Phil. 4: 16). Sometimes he refused such 
support. He reminds the Corinthians that in their 
case he had not used "to the full" his "right in 



no THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

the gospel" since when among them he had 
" used none of these things" (i Cor. 9: 15). In- 
variably, whether funds contributed by his con- 
verts and intrusted to his care were intended for 
him or for others, he revealed an absolute un- 
selfishness; and his principal acts in relation to 
church funds seem to have concerned contribu- 
tions for the assistance of indigent believers in 
whom he was interested. 

We note the following leading features of St. 
Paul as a church financier. He exercised what 
we may call a holy adroitness in employing the 
benevolent spirit in one center as a fulcrum to 
move the hearts and purses of believers else- 
where. Thus he informs the Church of Corinth 
that he is boasting of the beneficence of that 
church to the Christians of Macedonia. "I glory 
on your behalf," he says, "to them of Mace- 
donia" (2 Cor. 9: 2). His laudable aim is plainly 
twofold. He intends to awaken the generosity 
of the believers in Macedonia, and he desires a 
deepening of the same spirit where it has already 
had a noble exercise. Herein is holy common 
sense. We discover, also, in the apostle, a con- 
secrated thrift. In advising the churches of 
Galatia and Corinth concerning the manner of 
their offerings he urges them to make their con- 



ST. PAUL THE PASTOR in 

tributions weekly, so that the aggregates will be 
likely to be augmented; and on Sundays, the 
days when Christians are likely to be most in the 
mood of giving; and without excepting any from 
the obligation to give; and to have the totals 
ready on his arrival, to avoid a hurry and 
scramble for a respectable amount after his 
coming (i Cor. 16: 1-4). Here are foresight, 
economy, prudence — for the sake of Christ's 
poor; in other words, consecrated thrift, — thrift 
laid on God's altar. And we find in the apostle a 
businesslike method in handling church funds, in 
that he appears invariably to have required the 
assistance of others, and these not named by 
himself, in holding money offerings, and in the 
auditing of his accounts with the churches. 
"Whomsoever ye shall approve by letters," he 
writes to the Corinthians, "them will I send to 
carry your bounty unto Jerusalem" (1 Cor. 16: 
3). Hence, conscious as he was of his own 
integrity, he had enough practical wisdom to 
take precautions lest some shallow-brained or 
malicious critic might arise to charge him with 
misusing the offerings of his churches. He kept 
himself, with marked caution, above suspicion. 
He did not, in this regard, suffer his good to be 
evil spoken of. 



ii2 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

I have recently heard from a business man the 
remark concerning a clergyman: "He has good 
ideas of business — for a minister!" Such a 
remark could not have been made if all pastors 
had been as discreet, thrifty and wise in their 
relation to money matters as the apostle Paul. 
And we must add, that if all pastors were 
as faithful as St. Paul was in urging upon their 
people the duty and privilege of giving, there 
would be fewer burdensome church debts, and 
fewer piteous accounts of paralyzing deficiencies 
in the treasuries of our missionary societies. 

The attitude of the apostle toward the sacra- 
ments deserves remark in this connection. He 
himself on a few occasions baptized his converts, 
for instance — as is probable — the jailer of Philippi 
and the members of his household, and the dis- 
ciples of John in Ephesus; though the nature of 
his work as chiefly a pioneer forbade his fre- 
quent administration of the rite. He tells us 
that he baptized only a few individuals in 
Corinth, though he spent months in that city 
(i Cor. i : 14-16). But he regarded baptism as the 
sign of entrance into church membership, as is 
clear from his remarks: "In one Spirit were we 
all baptized into one body" (1 Cor. 12: 13), and 
"as many of you as were baptized into Christ 



ST. PAUL THE PASTOR 113 

did put on Christ" (Gal. 3: 27). The Lord's 
Supper he regarded as of great value, since the 
rite was founded by our Lord, both as a 
memorial of Christ and as a communion with 
fellow-believers and with the Lord (1 Cor. 11: 
23-25] 10: 16). Whenever he speaks of this 
sacrament he does so, as Professor Adeney has 
said, "with peculiar reverence." 1 

In the present connection, also, I may speak of 
the apostle's practice and teaching with relation 
to church discipline. The one clear illustration 
of discipline exercised by the apostle against 
an unworthy church member is the case of the 
offender in Corinth. The offense of this in- 
dividual had been exceedingly shameful, and 
apparently committed unblushingly (1 Cor. 5: 1). 
St. Paul instituted severe measures against him, 
with the twofold object of saving the man's 
soul, and of protecting his church against re- 
proach (1 Cor. 5: 3-5). The end justified the 
action ; for evidently its object became repentant, 
and the apostle afterwards urged that he be for- 
given, kindly treated, and even loved (2 Cor. 2). 
The following principles governing discipline are 
inferable from the apostle's action in this in- 
stance, and the tone of his teaching generally: 

1 Theology of the New Testament, p. 211. 



ii 4 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

First, severe action, even to the point of excom- 
munication, is sometimes demanded of a church 
toward an offending member. A church is not 
to tolerate within its ranks a brother who is 
deliberately and continuously "a fornicator, or 
covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a 
drunkard, or an extortioner" (i Cor. 5: 11). 
There are times when a church is to "purge out 
the old leaven " (1 Cor. 5 : 7). Christians are not 
to be " unequally yoked with unbelievers" 
(2 Cor. 6: 14). Yet, second, the love principle, 
not vindictiveness, is ever to be the basis of 
discipline. And third, the principal aim of such 
action should always be to secure the offender's 
recovery, — "that the spirit may be saved" 
(1 Cor. 5:4). When the suspended or excom- 
municated brother truly reveals the fruits of 
repentance then the church should " forgive him 
and comfort him, lest by any means such a one 
should be swallowed up with his overmuch 
sorrow" (2 Cor. 2:7). 

My revered teacher, Prof. A. A. Hodge, was 
accustomed to warn his students to resort to 
discipline rarely during their pastorates, and, 
whenever extreme cases demanded such action, 
to exercise it with extreme caution, and in the 
kindest and most prayerful spirit. Judicious ad- 



ST. PAUL THE PASTOR 115 

vice; and in what perfect harmony with St. 
Paul's spirit and method! 

Pastoral visitation, as a feature of the pastor's 
task, finds warrant in the example of St. Paul. 
He reminds the elders of Ephesus at Miletus 
that during his sojourn in their midst he had 
taught them not only publicly, but also "from 
house to house" (Acts 20: 21). And if the 
apostle could find time to visit his people in any 
church from house to house, and if pastors of our 
time, of manifold interests, like John Hall and 
William M. Taylor, could make it possible to visit 
systematically the houses in their pastorates, few 
young pastors surely may excuse themselves on 
any plea from this important form of service. 

We are yet to consider the topic of the apostle's 
pastoral dealing with believers in various situa- 
tions of spiritual weakness or of distress. 

One class to whom we find him ministering is 
that of the perplexed. A goodly portion of the 
First Epistle to the Corinthians, to look no 
further, is plainly designed for souls in a state 
of perplexity. There are various sorts of people 
in the church of that cosmopolitan center. There 
are leaders of discord; there are men of pride, 
conceit, and self-will; there are victims of a mor- 
bid conscience; there are those of a chastened 



n6 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

and crushed spirit; there are also, we doubt not, 
healthful and true servants of Christ. But 
plainly, too, as we judge from the tone of the 
epistle referred to, an important element of the 
Corinthian Christians consists of sincere souls 
that are caught between two contrary forces of 
instruction, like the ship that drifted to the 
Melitan shore, where two seas met. Indeed, it 
is easy to regard the whole of this message as an 
answer to a series of questions. "What shall 
we decide in face of this spirit of division, when 
one says, 'I am of Paul,' and another, ' I am of 
Apollos,' and another, 'I am of Cephas,' and 
another, 'I am of Christ'?" 'Ms it right for us 
to settle our disputes in the heathen courts ? " 
"Are we to believe those who say that marriage 
is sinful ?" " Is it a sin for us to eat meat that 
has been used in heathen sacrifices?" "How 
about this practice of speaking with tongues in 
our religious gatherings?" "Are we to believe 
those who teach that the resurrection has no 
reality ? " These are among the questions that 
appear to have disturbed many of the believers 
in Corinth at the date of that "astonishing and 
eloquent epistle" which sprang from the au- 
thor's beating heart and was punctuated by his 
tears (2 Cor. 2: 4). 



ST. PAUL THE PASTOR 117 

Speaking in general terms we simply remark 
concerning the apostle's method in helping these 
perplexed ones in Corinth that, first, he offers 
his advice in love — the grace that is far above 
the gift of prophecy and knowledge and zeal, — 
his heart goes with his counsel; and, second, he 
reveals his practical common sense in grappling 
with difficult questions; and, third, he deter- 
mines the answer to special questions in each 
case by the application of broad principles — thus 
warranting the praise of F. D. Maurice that First 
Corinthians is "the best manual for the ductor 
dubitantium because it teaches him that he must 
not give himself airs of certainty on points where 
certainty is not to be had." 1 In a sentence, there 
is no better illustration of the apostle's method of 
dealing with the spiritually perplexed than this 
epistle. It would be well for every student of 
the ministry at the outset to gain a complete 
mastery not only of its contents but of its spirit, 
as a chief means of equipment for the task of 
helping those in spiritual difficulties. We may 
not dwell on illustrations elsewhere of the apos- 
tle's pastoral help to the class in question. 

Another class to whom the apostle affords pas- 
toral help is that of the contentious and wayward, 

1 Unity of the New Testament. 



n8 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

Here we are brought to regard him as a peace- 
maker of the highest type. He is not a " peace- 
at-any-price " pastor. But so far as possible con- 
sistent with honor to Christ he would have his 
spiritual children be at peace with their neighbors 
(Rom. 12: 18). He is plainly grieved to find his 
converts in Corinth engaged in litigation before 
heathen tribunals, and he warmly demands, 
"Dare any of you, having a matter against his 
neighbor, go to law before the unrighteous, 
and not before the saints?" (1 Cor. 6: 1). 
Christians, to his mind, should find a way to an 
amicable and quiet settlement of their differences. 
He beseeches converts elsewhere "to walk 
worthily," "with long-suffering, forbearing one 
another in love" (Eph. 4: 2). It is, indeed, his 
thought that serious differences should not arise 
between Christian brethren, since he urges the 
Philippians, so dear to his heart, to fulfill his joy 
by "having the same love, being of one accord, 
of one mind" (Phil. 2: 2). It appears that two 
of his friends in Philippi have been squabbling, 
for he exhorts Euodia and Syntyche "to be of 
the same mind in the Lord " (Phil. 4: 2). And in 
writing to the Colossians he reaches the highest 
ground by insisting that class differences and 
disputes are an impossibility in the sanctified 



ST. PAUL THE PASTOR 119 

state. There cannot, in the Christian brother- 
hood, be "Greek and Jew," but "Christ is all, 
and in all" (Col. 3: 11). It is a suggestive ques- 
tion as to the disposition of patriotism, and in- 
ternational disputes that is required by the spirit 
of the apostle in language like this. 

Evidence is constant to show that, as the apos- 
tle surveyed the little colonies of believers which 
came to mark his missionary paths, rejoicing in 
their newborn faith while mourning their petty 
jealousies, heartburnings, and contentions, his 
soul ever went out toward the wayward and 
quarrelsome, not like that of a zealot, but like 
that of a kind father of unruly children. His 
spirit is conciliatory, and it disarms contentious- 
ness. He does not take sides save when Christ's 
honor itself is at stake. He would rather tame 
and save a half-savage in the Christian camp than 
to drive him forth into the forest. On him might 
well have been pronounced the benediction of 
our great poet: — 

" God's benison go with you, and with those 
That would make good of bad, and friends of foes ! " 

In our own time nothing is apt to be a more 
trying task for the average pastor than to act 
properly toward classes or individuals that are at 



120 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

variance. To try to settle the disputes of others 
is too often like trying to put out fire — there is 
danger of the fireman getting his own fingers 
burned. Perhaps the pastor can follow no better 
rule in general than to magnify in his speech and 
in his own behavior the principle of action of St. 
Paul regarding disputes and disputants. Let 
him join issue with none save only with the 
spirit of quarrelsomeness. And the peace-loving 
pastor, it may be added, may often by the same 
quality of temper win to himself his own op- 
ponents. A quotation from one of Mr. Beecher's 
lectures may have value in this connection. 
"There lived over on the other side of the street 
in Lawrenceburg, where first I had my settle- 
ment, a very profane man who was accounted 
ugly. I understood that he had said some very 
bitter things of me. I went right over into his 
store, and sat down on the counter to talk with 
him. I happened in often, — day in and day out. 
My errand was to make him like me. 1 did make 
him like me, — and all the children too." ! This 
is Christianity. In the early Christian age, we 
are told, the sneers of the heathen were silenced 
when they were compelled to say, "See how 
these Christians love one another! " 

1 Lyman Beecber Lectures on Preaching. 



ST. PAUL THE PASTOR 121 

Yet the apostle in his contact with unruly men 
did not hesitate to administer reproof when it 
was demanded. Passing by his stern rebuke of 
the high priest on the castle stairs, we find in- 
stances of words of his of merited sharpness in 
his letters to the Corinthians and Thessalonians, 
and in that to the Galatians and that to the Phi- 
lippians. There are times when the conscientious 
pastor is to answer the fool according to his 
folly, and the backbiter according to his venom. 

Still another class to whom the apostle offers 
pastoral help is that of the weak of conscience. 
There is always a class, — not of the most intelli- 
gent, not of the best spiritual maturity, — who 
have conscientious scruples concerning attitudes 
and acts that are in themselves indifferent. To- 
ward this class St. Paul is not harsh or impatient, 
since he realizes that Christ died for the weak as 
well as for the strong. The better-instructed 
and larger-spirited brother, according to his teach- 
ing, is to act not merely with reference to his 
own conscience but to that also of the weak 
brother. Perhaps the apostle's statement that 
best sums up his own principle of action to- 
ward the latter class is the appeal in Romans: 
"Let us not therefore judge one another any 
more: but judge ye this rather, that no man put 



122 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

a stumbling-block in his brother's way" (Rom. 
14: 13). And the true and faithful pastor will 
never forget that he owes duties not only to the 
mature in spiritual knowledge, but also to the 
"babes in Christ." 

The class to whom the apostle gave pastoral 
help that we shall finally consider is that of 
the bereaved and afflicted. Early in his course 
he must have gained for his own soul the pre- 
cious lesson that there is for the believer a gra- 
cious purpose in affliction. He writes to the Ro- 
mans, and, as we are persuaded, out of his own 
experience, "Tribulation worketh patience; and 
patience probation; and probation hope" (Rom. 
5: 3). The first step for him who would help 
the afflicted is to see the golden side of trouble 
in his own horizon. The apostle has not only 
been lifted to sunny heights of peace through 
the ministry of sorrow, but he has also learned 
that God has directly aimed to fit him through 
chastening to comfort the chastened. He tells 
the Corinthians in the second letter that it is God 
" who comforteth " him " in all " his " affliction, 
that" he might "be able to comfort them that 
are in any affliction, through the comfort where- 
with " he himself has been " comforted of God " 
(2 Cor. 1:4); and with his sword of consola- 



ST. PAUL THE PASTOR 123 

tion thus tempered with fire he is able to go to 
the rescue of the sorrowful and discouraged in 
the name of Peace. Early in his missionary 
career we find him in Lystra, Iconium, and Anti- 
och, encouraging his converts with the thought 
that tribulation is a stairway along which we 
ascend in the kingdom of God (Acts 14: 22); 
and the primary aim of the letters to the Thessa- 
lonians seems to have been to console the be- 
reaved and saddened. "We would not have 
you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that fall 
asleep; that ye sorrow not, even as the rest, 
which have no hope" (1 Thes. 4: 13). "That 
ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of 
God, for which ye also suffer " (2 Thes. 1 : 5). 
Such are among the consoling words which must 
have fallen like soothing balm on bruised hearts, 
that this tender, sympathetic pastor-friend con- 
veyed to his spiritual children in Thessalonica. 
They are but examples of expressions and illus- 
trations of a tone that is everywhere prominent 
in his pastoral oversight of the churches he had 
begotten. The Resurrection Chapter of First 
Corinthians — the beauty, pathos, eloquence, and 
power of which no adjective can describe — what 
is it primarily other than a pastoral message 
of consolation to the bereaved? And as the 



i2 4 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

apostle is a pastor of the ages, who shall count 
the myriads whose tears have been dried by the 
triumphant word, "O death, where is thy vic- 
tory ? " The chapter is an unfailing treasure- 
trove for those who sorrow for the dead — 

" Christian mourners, while they wait 
In silence, by some churchyard gate." 

Such is our imperfect outline sketch of St. Paul 
viewed as a pastor. Let us assure ourselves that 
the world can never outgrow the need of such 
service as the man of God can give, speaking in 
Christ's name, as he comes into close contact 
with weak and needy men and women. And 
let not the minister of the gospel in this or any 
other age believe that any degree of scholarship 
or full measure of pulpit eloquence can supply 
the place of the hand-to-hand conflict with sin 
and suffering that pertains to faithful pastoral 
oversight and service. 



THE INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS OF 
ST. PAUL 



If a man's eye is on the eternal his intellect will grow.— 

Emerson. 

A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible favors 
and blessings of Fortune, but in the inward and unseen per- 
fections and riches of the mind. — Plutarch. 

Dost thou know Greek ? — Acts 21 : 37. 



VI 

THE INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS OF ST. PAUL 

It is well often to consider the fact that Chris- 
tianity is adapted to attract the best that is in 
intellect no less than to stir what is most 
genuine in emotion. To be sure, the teaching 
concerning the Cross appeared to be "foolish- 
ness" to the spirit of Athens, for intellect as 
well as stupidity is often blind to truth in its 
higher forms; but nevertheless there is not lack- 
ing an essential affinity between the gospel and 
mind at its noblest. It is likewise true that 
respect for the religious system of which Jesus is 
the vital center is necessarily inspired and intensi- 
fied by the knowledge that men of mental force 
have never been wanting who have assented to 
that system. The world cannot but be impressed 
by the devotion of a great mind to the person 
and teachings of Christ. For, say what we will, 
intellect commands universal honor. We un- 
consciously pay deference to the moral attitudes 

of those who rule in the world of thought. Any 
127 



i 2 8 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

cause has won an immense advantage when it 
has gained the championship of a commanding 
intellect. 

We therefore do well to view the intellectual 
side of the character of St. Paul. There is an 
argument for Christianity in the fact that Christ 
won to himself a mind of such princely gifts. 
Thousands are yet to be attracted to the Son of 
God through the mental splendor of his most 
brilliant apostle. 

He was an intellectual Hercules. No other 
champion of the gospel in his time measured up 
to his mental stature. He met no antagonist 
who was able to stand before the club of his 
argument. He could hurl mountains at error 
and wrongdoing. The lightnings of the whole 
heaven of truth were at his command in his 
war for faith and wholesome living. Moreover, 
his mental breadth and power were monumental, 
— they made an ineffaceable impression on the 
thought of the ages. His mind has stood the 
supreme test of genius: its action is not limited 
by the boundaries of a century or millennium. 
His thought is still vital and vigorous no less than 
it was when it first flashed from his gigantic 
soul. He is more than the peer of the. greatest 
thinkers of Christianity of the Christian centuries. 



INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS 129 

Farrar has thus eloquently, yet not extravagantly, 
characterized his mental preeminence as revealed 
in his writings: "If we look at him only as a 
writer, how immensely does he surpass, in his 
most casual epistles, the greatest authors, 
whether Pagan or Christian, of his own and 
succeeding epochs. The younger Pliny was fa- 
mous as a letter writer, yet the younger Pliny 
never produced any letter so exquisite as that to 
Philemon. Seneca, as a moralist, stood almost 
unrivaled, yet not only is clay largely mixed 
with his gold, but even his finest moral aphor- 
isms are inferior in breadth and intensity to the 
most casual of St. Paul's. Epictetus and Marcus 
Aurelius furnish us with the purest and noblest 
specimens of Stoic loftiness of thought, yet St. 
Paul's chapter on charity is worth more than all 
they ever wrote." * The intellect of this apostle, 
wherever we view its action, is thus to be classed 
among the stupendous creations of the Almighty. 
Said Carlyle: "The world's wealth is in its 
original men; by these and their works it is a 
world, and not a waste." St. Paul's originality 
demands notice as the first among the marks of 
his intellectual vastness. He gave the world new 
thought. "We owe to him hundreds of ideas 

1 The Life and Work of St. Paul. 



130 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

which were never uttered before." Of but a 
small fraction of those accounted the world's 
great thinkers can this be said. Most of the 
great intellects of the ages have simply given a 
new aspect to old ideas. Their task has been 
akin to that of the workman who takes the 
rough gem, and fashions it, and polishes it, and 
gives it a fine setting. Only the one great mind 
of ten thousand is capable of bringing in vast 
measure from its hidden depths the rough treas- 
ure of truth. There are two sorts of originality, 
that of style, and that of thought. The latter 
is immeasurably rarer than the former, as it is an 
unspeakably better evidence of mental greatness. 
How many prophets have arisen, say in the last 
century, — nay, in the past five centuries, — who 
have enriched the world by presenting on a large 
scale wholly new and permanently valuable 
thought? Are they ten ? Are they five? Only 
when we reflect upon the extreme rarity of the 
sort of fecundity of St. Paul's intellect are we in 
a condition to recognize the significance of his 
creative power. 

We are speaking of a characteristic of the 
apostle that is apparent chiefly, of course, in his 
writings. These thirteen letters, written doubt- 
less with no consciousness of their immortality, 



INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS 131 

are forever vital, forever fresh in interest, because 
they struck a new note in the music of God's 
language to men. So decided is the originality 
of their manifold message that they appear to 
stand on a summit between two eternities. The 
message was not heard before, and it has had 
no successor. Forever, in sublime isolation, 
stands the thought structure of the apostle by 
itself, above comparison with the fruitage of any 
authorship since the canon of Scripture was 
closed. Further, the writings of the apostle re- 
veal their originality by the fact that they belong 
to that class of literature which is always inspiring 
other literature. Thus viewed only on the human 
side St. Paul is to be classed with authors like 
Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. Consider the 
hundreds and hundreds of books treating of the 
Pauline epistles that have appeared in English and 
German, to look no further, during the past fifty 
years. Yet we must not seem to measure St. 
Paul's genius by that of any secular writer. 
The sort of originality which characterizes him 
as an author is the fruit only of God's Spirit. It 
is an immeasurably higher sort of originality 
than that of the greatest philosophers, moralists, 
and poets, of Greece or England. It is an orig- 
inality arising from a special inbreathing of the 



1 32 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

divine Mind into a human spirit of wondrous 
native originality. 

Another mark of the largeness of St. Paul's 
intellect is his evident sense of proportion. Large 
efforts for large needs, lesser strenuousness for 
small issues — this is the rule for minds built on a 
large scale. An insignificant artist may spend a 
year in painting a shoe buckle, or the scales on a 
fish; but a Da Vinci or a Turner will reveal his 
greater genius by expending his chief force on 
the large features of his canvas, dismissing the 
trivial elements with a few rough strokes of his 
brush. So a truly great teacher, a prophet of the 
first order, will not wreak his great wealth of 
passion on the subordinate questions. He will 
spend his largest life force in righting the great 
wrongs, in establishing the broad and lasting 
principles of his faith. He will understand moral 
perspective. He will understand the matter of 
size. So the student of St. Paul soon discovers 
that his master's main contention is always for 
the large and universal truths. He never makes 
a mountain of a molehill. He wastes no time 
in combating evils that will take care of them- 
selves. He has a comparatively slight interest in 
merely temporary or local concerns. There is 
thus great suggestiveness in his omissions. 



INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS 133 

Posture in prayer, the question of a liturgy, in- 
struments of music in God's house, the mode of 
baptism, the precise relation of the Christian to 
particular issues in the political sphere — slavery, 
or temperance legislation, for instance, — the true 
attitude of the believer toward particular forms 
of amusement, — these questions do not seem to 
trouble the apostle. The reason is, he seems to 
feel that if men accept his fundamental teach- 
ings the minor practical questions of the reli- 
gious life will solve themselves. He deals with 
the distinctive Jewish rite only so far as it stands 
related to the large and permanent issue of Chris- 
tian freedom. The rite in itself considered is un- 
important to him. Neither circumcision availeth 
anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new crea- 
ture. Such is his view of the matter. The 
question, likewise, of meats and drinks interests 
him only so far as it relates to the larger topic of 
Christian love. These references illustrate his 
common mental attitude, and they show him to 
us as a man of large intellectual caliber. Indeed 
the characteristic in question pertains to a mind 
quality rather than to a conscience quality. The 
fact that the apostle always lays his heaviest 
emphasis upon such sublime subjects as human 
depravity, the atonement, justification, faith, holi- 



i 3 4 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

ness, love, the judgment, and freedom from the 
bondage to form, is an indication essentially of a 
mental rather than of a moral trait. It is, in 
other words, a matter of correct vision. He has 
large visual power. He is great in drawing 
distinctions. 

Contrast with this quality in the apostle that 
pettiness of mind which has often characterized 
the laity and clergy alike throughout Christian his- 
tory. Consider that sects have been founded on 
such issues as the question of an organ in the house 
of worship, or the question of suffrage in the 
State, or even the tremendous question of bap- 
tism in running water! We have known clergy- 
men to resign their charges because of a disa- 
greement with their church officials over the 
quality of communion wine, and we have known 
others who have acted as if a vital principle were 
involved in the question of church fairs or pew 
rentals. Doubtless there are clergymen and lay- 
men now living who would be willing to be 
burned at the stake as martys to the vast prin- 
ciple of lighted candles in a chancel, or the ar- 
chitecture of a reredos, or the correct style of sar- 
torial decoration on the back of a priest! There 
are martyrs and martyrs. It will be well for us 
to learn the lesson from the broad-minded apostle 



INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS 135 

of overlooking the trivial matters in Christian 
casuistry, and spending our vital powers in es- 
tablishing more firmly on earth those vast prin- 
ciples of divine teaching which are of universal 
and eternal interest. 

A further indication of the intellectual great- 
ness of St. Paul is his evident breadth of vision. 
His mind is at the opposite pole from that of the 
parochial spirit. With an eagle eye he scans the 
whole horizon. His plans involve the civilized 
world. His message is for thousands, and tens 
of thousands. Preaching for him is not to be 
limited by the bounds of a single language. He 
will make himself heard by the people of many 
nationalities; he will send his gospel forth on the 
wings of many sorts 4 of tongues. We rightly 
attribute greatness of intellect to Alexander of 
Macedon, and Caesar of Rome, and Charles the 
Great, and Napoleon of France, because they 
knew how to plan campaigns on a vast scale; 
because they could rule not only a nation, but a 
group of nations; because they had the force and 
skill to impress their personalities on the million, 
of varied national traits and many tongues. 
They were more than national leaders; they 
were in a large sense world leaders. The 
same sort of genius is to be attributed to the 



136 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

apostle to the Gentiles. It would not have ap- 
peared remarkable if, after his conversion, this 
son of Abraham had settled in Antioch or Tar- 
sus, and confined his evangelistic efforts to the 
narrow constituency of a single town. But be- 
cause he possessed the genius of a large general- 
ship in connection with his burning faith he 
straightway was granted the blessing of a large 
vision, — a vision of the teeming millions of the 
Roman world, and, stretching far away beyond 
the edge of the empire, millions of the uncivi- 
lized, reaching out their hands imploringly for the 
gospel of the all-loving Christ as a gift intrusted 
to his charge. And there are indications that his 
eye was cast upon the great world lying in 
shadow far beyond the provinces tributary to 
the Caesars, and that his thought reached ahead 
to the remote future. Obedient to that vision he 
became a preacher not to a congregation, not to 
a locality, but to the nations, and the coming 
centuries. In consequence, the literary heritage 
he left the world consisted not only of books 
dedicated to individuals, but chiefly of those 
dedicated to Christian circles of great cities of the 
empire, scattered over Asia Minor, Achaia, Greece, 
and Italy. Thus the breadth of the horizon he 
was able to command classes him with the great 



INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS 137 

masters of generalship and the great seers, of 
all the ages. 

But it is chiefly in his grasp of argument that 
the apostle reveals the nature and training of a 
truly great mind. He is a born logician, and of 
the first order. He is not devoid of imagination, 
— no first-class preacher is,— but he is lacking in 
fancy. He has the imagination of the seer, but 
he lacks the fancy of the poet. His mental proc- 
esses, generally speaking, are those of the phi- 
losopher rather than of the poet. But this philo- 
sophic quality, stripped of its accidental features, 
is of the noblest sort. The greatest intellect is 
that of him who not only recognizes the force of 
great germinal truths, but who also is able with- 
out a misstep to follow those truths to their re- 
mote consequences. Trained in the rabbinic 
school, it would not have been surprising if the 
pedantic and false logical method of the teachers 
of his people had adhered to him permanently. 
But the main links of his arguments are always 
sound. We often recognize rabbinic elements 
in his logic, and perhaps we ought to admit that 
rabbinic faults are not wanting in his style of 
thinking. But these are but the accidental fringe 
of his dialectical garments. The main fiber of 
the fabric is soundly woven, and without a seam. 



i 3 S THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

So true is his logic that it has even been thought 
that he must have studied Aristotle. Coleridge 
somewhere refers to his logic as Aristotelian. 
Dr. Hodge seems to think that he received in part 
his mastery of logic from a Greek source. He 
says, " He pursues, far more than any other of 
the sacred writers of Jewish education, the log- 
ical method of presenting truth," — and the re- 
mark follows the suggestion that he perhaps 
gained his education in part " in a Grecian city." 1 
But we are inclined to the view, — speaking 
strictly of the human side to the apostle's method, 
— that simply the vigor of his genius brought 
him unconsciously in line with the Aristotelian 
method. He and Aristotle drank from the same 
stream. He thought in right lines in virtue of 
his genius, as Aristotle did, though in a diviner 
sense. But he is a greater thinker than Aristotle, 
for the reason that, besides his special guidance 
from above, his subjects transcend those of the 
Greek master as far as Everest overtops the Jung- 
frau. When we study as an illustration his 
masterpiece, the Epistle to the Romans, we dis- 
cover a mind that strides like the fabled giant, 
from mountain top to mountain top; we see an 
intellect that, with superhuman climbing power, 

1 Hodge on Romans, Introduction. 



INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS 139 

moves with ease among the stars. Viewed as 
genius there is nothing in secular literature to 
compare with the dialectic of St. Paul — "the 
bold soaring dialectic with which he rises from 
the forms of our finite and earthly thought to the 
infinite and the spiritual life embodied in them." 
And here, we repeat, is the chief evidence of his 
intellectual preeminence. For a finite mind to 
hold in firm grasp thoughts that transcend the 
finite, and to be able to mold those thoughts 
into a comprehensible system, — this is to possess 
the greatest power ever vouchsafed to man. 
There is perhaps danger here of our failing to 
distinguish clearly between the human and the 
superhuman in the mind of St. Paul the writer. 
But since, as Dr. Hodge says, "the Holy Spirit, 
in employing men as his instruments in convey- 
ing truth, did not change their mental habits," 1 
we can hardly err in regarding the peerless dia- 
lectical skill of the apostle as the great mark of 
his natural genius. 

Finally, we must not fail to note as one of 
the elements of the intellectual greatness of St. 
Paul, his perpetual disposition to growth. We 
believe that there can be traced in his history 
subsequent to his conversion, and to the end, a 

1 Hodge on Romans, Introduction. 



i 4 o THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

constant mental growth. His intellect never ap- 
pears to have become jaded. He never loses his 
interest in men and things. Better and better he 
understands the human heart, and society, and 
God's purposes concerning the world. He is 
never so wise, and his spirit is never so genial, 
as when his immediate outlook is upon his final 
release from toil. Far from discovering any 
failure of his mental powers in his old age we 
cannot but feel that, barring his physical decline, 
he is, in mental equipment, better fitted to teach 
in the year 67 than he was in the year 52. His 
continuous spiritual progress from his conversion 
to his death, is, we suppose, quite generally 
recognized. At first he apparently foresaw no 
large consequences of his conversion apart from 
his personal relation to Christ. But soon he 
heard his call to the work of a missionary; 
though "his original ideal of a Christian mission- 
ary was based purely upon a Hebrew type of 
thought." Following this we discover that his 
theory of the kingdom of God centered about 
the hope of the Master's second coming — a 
theory lacking in full breadth of view rather than 
in truth. Thence he seems to have grown away 
into the grand conception of the kingdom of 
Christ brought to fulfillment not subsequent but 



INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS 141 

prior to the end of this dispensation, and con- 
terminous with the vast empire of Rome. From 
this conception arose the more splendid vision of 
the world instead of Rome subdued to Christ. 
And finally, at the end of his life, he appears to 
have grown up to the stupendous conception of 
Christ's complete reign over, not merely the 
world, but the universe. Such, at all events, is 
the outline of the apostle's spiritual progress as 
traced in Matheson's highly suggestive essay on 
the subject, and to which we may, in the main, 
assent. 1 But is it not clear that a spiritual growth 
of this order in a man's history from middle life 
to old age is conditioned upon an intellectual 
growth during the same period ? If St. Paul had 
been of an ordinary type of mind, if he had 
reached in middle age an intellectual dead line, 
his sort of spiritual progress would have ceased 
at the hour that marked the beginning of his 
mental decline. Humanly speaking it was pos- 
sible for his spiritual nature to expand un- 
ceasingly because he never ceased to keep his 
eyes open, because he was always looking for 
new light, because he never suffered prejudice 
or the fear of inconsistency to prevent a wise 
modification of previous conceptions. Clearly 

1 Matheson, The Spiritual Development of St. Paul. 



142 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

there is here an intellectual as well as a spiritual 
quality. 

St. Paul was one of those men who may be 
described as being very much alive; and the 
vitality of his mind was of extraordinary per- 
sistence. We cannot think of such a type of in- 
tellect as burning out prematurely. St. Paul in his 
dotage is unthinkable. St. Paul past the point of 
alertness to make new discoveries of truth, or of 
keen interest in men, is likewise unthinkable. 
The work of such a man is never done until he 
dies. Indeed, his last work is apt to be his best. 
We have been reminded of the unfailing intel- 
lectual progress of St. Paul by the corresponding 
quality in Gladstone. The mind of the great 
nineteenth-century commoner of England never 
ceased to expand. He was an enthusiastic 
student at eighty-five. The best wine of his 
mental vintage was at the end of the feast. The 
truest intellectual greatness involves this quality 
of persistence of strength, and undying progress. 
And as we are bound to feel that the " one thing 
I do" principle of St. Paul had much to do in af- 
fording an unfailing stimulus to his mental 
powers, so we cannot doubt that too often a 
moral fault lies behind the premature failure of 
the powers of Christian workers. So long as the 



INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS 143 

faith and zeal of a Christian be intense he will be 
a learner; and so long as he learns, his work 
need not lack attractiveness and power. 

We must not close our account of the intel- 
lectual side of St. Paul's character without briefly 
referring to his literary style, — since " style is of 
the man." 1 As has been repeatedly shown, the 
dress in which his thought is arrayed is often 
lacking in form and gracefulness. His para- 
graphs are in the main solid and rugged, rather 
than polished and ornate. If the work of 
modern masters of literary style may be com- 
pared to a French garden, — level, regular and 
pretty,— the writings of St. Paul may be com- 
pared to a mountain range, — of irregular surface, 
with spots of bareness on its face, but, withal, 
dominating the landscape, and giving balance to 
the planet. The mountain with all its irregular- 
ities is more than the garden, since God, not 
man, is its maker. The sentences of the Pauline 
epistles are often involved, often broken and 
unfinished. Their form indicates a fierce on- 
rushing of ideas; a tide of thought that, like a 
swollen mountain torrent, is constantly leaping 
over its banks. Everywhere thought is above 
rhetoric. The author evidently cares only to 

1 Dlambert. 



i 4 4 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

convey his message. He is indifferent to the 
envelope of it. To change the figure, his style 
indicates a Vulcan pounding his anvil, with great 
thought fragments, white-hot, flying every- 
whither. Luther wrote of it, " meras flammas 
loquitur"; Erasmus compared it to a thunder- 
storm; Martineau has used this language con- 
cerning it: "Brilliant, broken, impetuous as the 
mountain torrent freshly filled, never smooth and 
calm but on the eve of some bold leap, never 
vehement but to fill some receptacle of clearest 
peace;" and Professor Stevens speaks thus: 
" His teaching is marked by an individuality and 
independence which prove him to have been the 
master, and not the servant, of the ideas and 
arguments with which he had been indoctrinated 
in his youth." As has been truly said, the 
very formlessness of this writing is an indication 
of its highest originality. The first plow that 
tears up the virgin soil does not leave a smooth 
surface. But when the work upon it of the 
pioneer is ended it is a minor task for an after- 
comer to level and beautify it. Yet we must not 
say that the writings of the apostle are wholly 
devoid of the beauty of form. Again and again, 
as he rises to a sublime height of spiritual ecstasy, 
his words become supremely eloquent and beau- 



INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS 145 

tiful. Of exalted literary grandeur is the ending 
to the eighth chapter of Romans. Nothing 
could be more beautiful than the chapter in the 
Corinthian letter on love. And the Epistle to 
Philemon has been aptly described as an "idyl of 
the progress of Christianity." But these occa- 
sional instances of matchless literary form do not 
appear to arise from an attempt at eloquence; 
they rather betoken an unconscious ascent of the 
author to the highest level of nature. In short, 
the apostle "has the style of genius, if not the 
genius of style." Nay, it is the style of a genius 
that is transfigured by the inner light of the Spirit 
of God. 

Thus in St. Paul's career we find the noblest 
illustration, in the apostolic age, of intellect and 
genius laid reverently at the feet of Jesus. 
And, thank God, in no century since have there 
been wanting intellects of the higher order that 
have been glorified by faith, and that in turn have 
added glory to the kingdom of the Son of God 
by their consecration to his blessed service. The 
great apostle was the precursor of a long line of 
intellectual noblemen and noblewomen, who, 
like him, have not been ashamed of the gospel of 
Christ. In our own time we have seen men like 
Faraday and De Lavelaye in science, Browning 



146 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

and Tennyson in letters, and Lincoln and Glad- 
stone in statesmanship, — princes, every one — 
who rejoiced to pay allegiance to the Redeemer, 
delighted to give the Most High their finest 
service. And may the coming centuries be rich 
in talented men who are ready to lay the divinest 
trophies of their genius reverently at the Master's 
feet. For a nation can offer God no gift com- 
parable to the gift of a princely intellect. As he 
looks down upon the earth in the coming years, 
may he claim for himself the souls that are not 
only good but great! 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF ST. PAUL 



How were friendship possible ? In mutual devotedness to 
the Good and True : otherwise impossible ; except as Armed 
Neutrality, or hollow Commercial League. A man, be the 
Heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten 
men, united in Love, capable of being and of doing what ten 
thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can 
yield to man. — Carlyle. 

Friendship has had its strongest hold on those who were 
strongest, and has done its best work in the best natures. Not 
the base but the noble, not the low but the lofty, not the de- 
pendent but the self-contained, in all spheres of life, seem to 
value most, and to be best fitted for, the gains and privileges 
and responsibilities of friendship. And therefore it is that 
friendship is most potent with those whose potency with others 
is greatest. — Trumbull. 

What do ye, weeping and breaking my heart ? — Acts 21 ; ij. 



VII 

THE FRIENDSHIPS OF ST. PAUL 

The picture which St. Luke draws for us of his 
hero in Csesarea with his face set toward Jerusa- 
lem, while his aching heart is being tugged at by 
two opposite forces — the tears of friends on the 
one hand, and his sense of duty on the other — 
may serve to present to us one of the most 
striking features of the apostle's ministry, — 
namely, his friendships. It has been said that " a 
friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of 
nature." And when we reflect upon the extra- 
ordinary power of friendship affection in our 
apostle, so often and so powerfully illustrated, 
we feel that we hardly err in terming his char- 
acter the chief of nature's master works. For 
surely friendship at its highest has never been 
better exemplified than in him. 

The evidences of what we may term his genius 

for friendship are abundant. The partial sketch 

of his life history in The Acts is replete with 

illustrations of his singular power of attaching 
149 



150 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

men to himself, of the enthusiastic devotion to 
him of many sorts of people, and of his magnifi- 
cent helpfulness to those who claimed his re- 
gard ; and his letters not only include numerous 
direct references to his friends and friendships, 
but, so far as they reveal the inner workings of 
his heart, they also bear in every line the stamp 
of a nature of wondrous affectionateness. He 
loves easily. The objects of his regard multiply 
rapidly. And once interested in a particular per- 
son he seems never to forget him. Distance 
does not appear to blunt the keen edge of his 
love. Time does not diminish his heart throbs. 
His own troubles never becloud his direct inter- 
est in his brethren. Even the infirmities of age 
do not distract his thought from distant disciples 
who need his instruction and his prayers. He 
lives always according to the divine principle of 
his glowing and rapturous tribute to that grace 
which " suffereth long and is kind" (i Cor. 
13: 4). "Friendship is love without either 
flowers or veil." Love of this species, abso- 
lutely disinterested, is the supreme master of 
this matchless personality. Of course in St. Paul 
friendliness is refined and glorified by the do- 
minion over him of the Spirit of Christ; but we 
must believe that affectionateness was born with 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF ST. PAUL 151 

his birth. Let us digress. Possibly we are war- 
ranted in drawing an inference from his great- 
heartedness concerning the character of the 
mother in the Tarsus home relating to whom 
not a hint of direct description has survived. It 
has been noted that the leading traits of many 
great men have been inherited from their moth- 
ers. Are we at variance with the law of he- 
redity, therefore, in supposing that the mother 
of the apostle was a woman of an extraordinary 
wealth of affection ? Is it pure fancy to suppose 
that the affableness of the man we know throws 
a dim light upon the home life of the child we 
have not known ? Leaving this surmise, we re- 
mark that certain of the very weaknesses of the 
apostle arise from the quality in question, and 
bear testimony to its power. We have all rec- 
ognized, for instance, his peculiar sensitiveness; 
and, as a feature of it, the keenness of his suffer- 
ing under the sting of ingratitude. His first 
letter to the Corinthians and that to the Gala- 
tians are each the outburst of a sensitive soul — a 
spirit not only jealous for truth, but also easily 
wounded by forgetfulness on the part of trusted 
friends. We can almost hear sobs behind the 
lines. Not grievous indignation so much as in- 
dignant grief appears in his references to those 



152 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

who have wronged him or forgotten his teach- 
ings. "All that are in Asia turned away from 
me; of whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes" 
(2 Tim. i: 15). "Alexander the coppersmith 
did me much evil" (2 Tim. 4: 14). "Their 
word will eat as doth a gangrene " — that of 
Hymenaeus and Philetus (2 Tim. 2: 17), — so he 
writes at the very last; and we readily believe 
that the writer is more hurt than angry. He has 
a woman's sensitiveness with his warrior cour- 
age; and it bespeaks a soul with a craving for 
hearts in whom his trust may abide. Thus, too, 
his sense of loneliness, — a quality that looks, but 
is not, out of place in a missionary, — is but an- 
other mark of his natural desire for friends. He 
truly suffers when separated from his friends, 
as is evidenced, to look no further, by his message 
from Athens to Silas and Timothy to " come to 
him with all speed" from Bercea (Acts 17: 15); 
by his distress in Troas when he failed to meet 
Titus there according to his expectation (2 Cor. 
2: 12, 13); and again, by the pathetic tone of 
his word from his last captivity, — " Only Luke 
is with me" (2 Tim. 4: 11); — and his suffering 
thus is a certain indication of a glowing passion 
of friendship. His heart burns with regard for 
his friends, as with hidden Vesuvian fires. 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF ST. PAUL 153 

In this extraordinary capacity for friend- 
ship St. Paul reveals a striking evidence of the 
essential greatness of his nature. Not all great 
men are great as friends; but it is safe to say 
that no small-souled man can love widely and 
deeply. It is reserved for large natures to loom 
up big in friendship. Many of the great think- 
ers of the ages have borne testimony to this truth. 
Says Sir Thomas Browne, "This noble affec- 
tion falls not on vulgar and common constitu- 
tions, but on such as are marked for virtue." 
Charles Kingsley asserts the truth thus: "It is 
only the great-hearted who can be true friends: 
the mean and cowardly can never know what 
true friendship means." And Cicero, with his 
philosophic insight into human nature, declared, 
"Just in proportion as a man has most confi- 
dence in himself, and as he is most completely 
fortified by worth and wisdom, so that he needs 
no one's assistance, and feels that all his resources 
reside in himself,— in the same proportion is 
he most highly distinguished for seeking out 
and forming friendships." No dwarfed soul, 
seamed with suspicions, chilled with envy, 
cramped by jealousy, shriveled with selfishness, 
is equal to a vast friendship. St. Paul's friend- 
ship was a giant passion. Hence it was the pas- 



154 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

sion of a giant. Heat for a planetary system 
can proceed only from a sun. 

But if the apostle's greatness of soul is indi- 
cated by the wealth of love he bestowed upon 
others, it is equally evidenced by the readiness 
with which others clung to him and fed upon 
his affection. It is only a strong manhood that 
can draw to itself a multitude. That this sturdy 
general in Christ's army could win the admira- 
tion and personal loyalty of such a variety of 
men in the ranks — old and young, native and 
foreigner, learned and unlearned — fully proves 
that he was framed after a large pattern. As 
Stalker well comments, "It was the largeness 
of his manhood which was the secret of this 
fascination; for to a big nature all resort, feeling 
that in its neighborhood it is well with them." 1 
On the fact of the immense circle of his friends 
we need not dwell. Who is unfamiliar with the 
long list of his personal acquaintances who re- 
joiced in the privilege of loving him while they 
deferred to him as their master — or rather, the 
partial list of these that has been preserved? 
Need we speak at length of what he was to 
Luke of Antioch, Barnabas of Cyprus, Silas of 
Jerusalem, Timothy of Lystra, and Mark of 

1 Life of St. Paul. 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF ST. PAUL 155 

Judaea — the staff-officers of his generalship ? 
Need we do more than name some of the others 
who gave him their hearts, — like Titus, Onesi- 
mus, Philemon, Archippus, Epaphras, Aristar- 
chus, Aquila, Priscilla, Tychicus, Trophimus, 
Apollos, and Erastus,— of the inferior officials of 
his command ? And shall we try to do more 
than mention others — of the rank and file of his 
devoted adherents — such as Andronicus, Junias, 
Demas, Crescens, Herodion, Epaphroditus, One- 
siphorus, Tertius, and Zenas ? These we must 
view as but a segment of the grand circle of his 
friends. Each was doubtless the center of a 
smaller circle of spiritual planets all revolving 
about the huge central sphere. Those who 
basked in the warmth of his personality were 
surely hundreds. In no exaggeration, there- 
fore, Dean Stanley describes the wide plane his 
friends occupied, in words declaring that he 
"had a thousand friends, and loved each as his 
own soul, and seemed to live a thousand lives in 
them, and to die a thousand deaths when he 
must part from them." These were his — and he 
was theirs. This love he won from the thousand 
hearts was his wealth; and who shall venture to 
weigh against it his toil, his hardships and his 
martyrdom ? Who shall venture to pronounce 



156 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

that man poor and his life fruitless who is the 
owner of such a treasure ? 

Not only did the apostle come to be sur- 
rounded by a great circle of friends, but he also 
received from many a splendid ardor of friend- 
ship. It often happens that the popular man, 
the man who brings light and joy into many 
companies, fails to realize the deeper currents of 
love from others while the sources of regard for 
him are multiplied. Often to be loved by many 
means to be loved by none with fullest intensity. 
But it was not so with St. Paul. A short ac- 
quaintance with him seems to have been sufficient 
to bind to him the hearts of his disciples with un- 
breakable cords. For instance, glance at the 
practical hospitality to him of Lydia the mer- 
chant-woman in Philippi. Almost at first sight 
of him on his first visit to that Macedonian city 
this large-hearted woman was constrained to 
offer her house as his temporary home. And 
short as his ministry was among them the 
Philippians grew to love him enough to supply, 
even after his departure, contributions for his 
support. The Galatians, as all will recall, like- 
wise lavished affection upon him during his first 
ministry in their province in no niggardly meas- 
ure, as appears from his subsequent commenda- 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF ST. PAUL 157 

tion of their hospitality. " Ye received me," he 
says, " as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. 
■. . . I bear you witness, that, if possible, ye 
would have plucked out your eyes and given 
them to me" (Gal. 4: 14, 15). It is safe to 
say that Aquila and Priscilla, — able, noble Chris- 
tian pair, — could not have loved him more if he 
had been their own father. Onesiphorus of 
Ephesus affords another striking illustration. 
During his last imprisonment in Rome the 
apostle is sought out by this friend while 
somehow in the metropolis, and is visited 
by him again and again, — at what cost of 
scorn and even personal peril we may read- 
ily imagine. And finally, sublime is the de- 
votion to him, even unto death, of Luke, 
"the faithful, unobtrusive, cultivated" physi- 
cian, the solitary companion of his very last 
days. Stalker has thus correctly written: "If he 
was bitterly hated by enemies, there was never 
a man more intensely loved by his friends." 1 
The streams of friendship that poured in upon 
him from so many sources were not, as a rule, 
shallow. Their depths were ordinarily below 
all sounding. 
We are brought next to consider what the 

1 Life of St. Paul. 



- 



158 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

apostle's friends were to him as instruments in 
accomplishing the work God assigned him. 
They were, in the first place, a constant, health- 
ful incentive to him. His friendships brought 
out the best that was in him. They quickened 
his intellect, enlarged his devotion to humanity 
in its illimitable breadth, and stimulated his 
heart hunger for souls as trophies for Christ. 
"To be without friends is to find the earth a 
wilderness," says Bacon; and rare indeed must 
be the man who could work at his best, to say 
nothing of feeling a lively interest in his work, 
without the inspiration of friendship. The 
soldier strikes more effectively as he thinks 
of the circle at the distant fireside. The poet 
must needs throw more heart into his verse, and 
the artist more soul upon his canvas, as they 
reflect on others who in their love would gladly 
applaud the product of their genius. Nay, 
further, what Christian preacher is there, 
whether laboring in most favored soil or in the 
midst of darkest heathenism, though he be con- 
strained mightily by the sufficient love of Christ, 
who is not strengthened somewhat by the power 
of the love of friends — those of his own flesh 
and blood, and those joined to him by remoter 
ties ? Some are more helped than others by this 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF ST. PAUL 159 

inspiration of friendship; and St. Paul seems to 
have been given wings by the sentiment beyond 
the experience of ordinary beings. When his 
heart quivers with concern lest his friends are 
forsaking him and his counsels, then we may 
look — and good instances are the Epistle to the 
Galatians and the First Epistle to the Corinthians 
— for his most powerful words for the Master. 
When he realizes most mightily the wealth of 
his own regard for a church or a man, then from 
his full heart is apt to issue his best councils for 
the instruction of the ages. The invaluable 
epistles to Timothy are an illustration in point. 
As Dr. H. C. Trumbull has said, " It was be- 
cause of the special friendship between St. Paul 
and Timothy that the letters from the one to 
the other have in them so much of tender sym- 
pathy and of affectionate counsel as a means of 
good to appreciative readers to the end of 
time." 1 Indeed, we may say that friendship 
was the occasion — the Spirit of God being their 
cause — of each of the thirteen priceless letters of 
the apostle, so vast, so far-reaching a factor of 
his Christian activity. And doubtless at every 
point of his missionary travels he was stimulated 
to wield the sword of the Spirit with power be- 

1 Friendship the Master Passion. 



160 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

yond his natural prowess, not only by the direct 
influence of the divine Spirit, but also, though in 
a lesser degree, by the space-defying force aris- 
ing from the hopes and prayers of present and 
distant friends. Surely it was so; since he never 
forgot a circle where he had once found cheer. 
" Eager as he was for new conquests, he never 
lost his hold upon those he had won." 1 While 
considering the golden fruitage of this most re- 
markable of 'preachers, let us not fail to note as 
one of the aids to it the loving sympathy of his 
fellow-workers. 

Furthermore, the apostle's friendships were a 
support to him in his hours of trial. In the time 
of bodily suffering his friends gave him tender 
nursing; in his temporary pecuniary need they 
contributed money for his support; in his lone- 
liness they brought courage with their presence; 
and in his imprisonments they dispelled the 
gloom of the dungeon by the light of loving 
comradeship and converse. Evidence is abun- 
dant of this indispensable support given to him in 
his days of weakness and trial by the presence 
of those he loved; but can we hesitate to believe 
that even in their absence from him, voluntary or 
involuntary, his friends supplied him with a sus- 

1 Stalker, Life of St. Paul. 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF ST. PAUL 161 

taining force ? His heart bounds upward when 
friends greet him at the Market of Appius; but 
ean we doubt that at many another point, as we 
know was the case in Corinth, his heart was 
likewise cheered by the assurance that other 
friends, though far away, held him in loving 
thought, and were making him the subject of 
their prayers? The presence of Onesiphorous 
and Luke brought somewhat of heaven into the 
Roman prison, we know; were there not also 
glimmers reflected thither from a thousand 
hearts, separated by weary distances from their 
master, that burned with undying affection 
for him ? Let us not feel that our love is 
valueless unless we can profess it with our 
lips to its object. Love is powerful in spite 
of distance, and where the mail pouch even is 
unknown. No ocean can confine it. No moun- 
tain range can serve as its barrier. As the 
Roentgen rays pass through opaque substances, 
so the light of love shines through even the iron 
doors of strongest prisons. It is ubiquitous. It 
is irresistible. 

As we speak of the moral support afforded 
the apostle by the affection of his friends, pres- 
ent and absent, we must not overlook the value 
to him of their prayers. We have often noted 



1 62 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

the frequency of his prayers for others; but we 
must not forget that he valued the prayers of 
others offered in his behalf. He asks the Thes- 
salonians more than once for their prayers 
(i Thes. 5: 25; 2 Thes. 3: 1). He earnestly re- 
quests the Colossians to pray for him that a new 
door for the gospel may be opened to him (Col. 
4: 3). In his letter to Philemon he refers in 
grateful tone to the prayers in his behalf of that 
cherished friend (Philemon 22). And the great- 
est of his letters does not close without a request 
for the prayers of its readers (Rom. 15:30). 
Having in mind the true source of all spiritual 
power, shall we not allow that, after all, the 
greatest service of the friends of St. Paul to 
their majestic leader was the sincere prayers 
that sprang forth for him from their devoted 
spirits ? Strong and great as he was he needed 
the friendship of the least of them ; and of 
all the forces impelled by their friendship he 
needed most their prayers. Thus we, too, 
can best prove our friendship for the serv- 
ants of God, by praying for them out of hearts 
that are full and warm. To offer earnest effect- 
ive prayer for others, — this is the highest pre- 
rogative of our humanity. It is a requisite gift 
of friendship. 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF ST. PAUL 163 

" For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those who call them friends ? " l 

St. Paul was absolutely unselfish in his devo- 
tion to his friends. Thus his friendship bears 
the stamp of the pure article. Says Dr. Trum- 
bull: "True friendship being love without com- 
pact or condition, true friendship never pivots 
on an equivalent return of service or of affec- 
tion. Its whole sweep is away from self and 
toward the loved one." 2 Such was friendship 
as exemplified in St. Paul, and thus we search 
the history of human friendships in vain for a 
higher type of friend than our apostle. Neither 
Ruth the Moabitess, nor Jonathan the prince, 
nor even the beloved disciple, revealed friendship 
of a higher sort. There was nothing sinister in 
his passion. There is no hint anywhere that he 
regarded a friend as a stepping-stone to power 
or pelf. He sought love for its own sake, — or 
rather, as a means of blessing to them who gave 
him their hearts. He sought not theirs but 
them. He gave in return for their love the best 
he had. For others he freely sacrificed his time, 
his labors, his anxieties, his sufferings, his pray- 
ers, his very life. His heart's desire and prayer 

1 Tennyson, Morte d' Arthur. 2 Friendship the Master Passion. 



1 64 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

to God for them was for their salvation. He 
was even willing to be himself accursed, if need 
be, in order that the crown of divine favor might 
adorn the brow of their redeemed manhood. 
He spent himself for their sakes. He lavished 
his dearest resources, with prodigal hand, on the 
altar of friendship, that his friends might be 
rich unto God. And touching beyond words are 
his prayers for his friends, revealing above all 
other proofs the unalloyed nobleness of his love 
for them. "The Lord grant mercy unto the 
house of Onesiphorus: for he oft refreshed me, 
and was not ashamed of my chain." Thus he 
writes to Timothy (2 Tim. 1 : 16) and the closing 
words of the letter are a prayer for the younger 
teacher: "The Lord be with thy spirit" (2 Tim. 
4: 22). Even for friends who had played the 
coward and deserted him he prays: "May 
it not be laid to their account" (2 Tim. 4: 16) 
— an echo of the prayer of Jesus on the cross for 
his enemies. Friendship nearer to that of Christ 
never appeared. 

It should be said, finally, that the love of St. 
Paul for human friends was subordinate always 
to his devotion to Christ. And this is only to 
say in another way that his friendships were 
pure. Friendship was never to him a snare or 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF ST. PAUL 165 

temptation. It did not move between him and 
Christ, eclipsing the authority of his Sovereign. 
He did not make an idol of his friends. There 
was no image worship in his affection. It has 
often happened that men have transferred to fel- 
low-mortals the devotion due to Christ su- 
premely. Often, too, love for faulty friends has 
led astray from the plain path of duty, — the 
lower path has been followed for friends' sake, 
rather than the higher path with the risk of 
alienating a friend. A thousand times the faulty 
counsels of friends, for friendship's sake, have 
been obeyed instead of the counsels of the Most 
High, with the result of disaster to the soul of 
the one loving and of the one beloved. Thus the 
friends of Balaam were a snare to him, and thus 
the love of Samson sheared away his lordly 
strength. But with St. Paul, Christ was first and 
friends second. Accordingly the best serv- 
ice of his friendship, next to his prayers, was 
sometimes the tender reminding of his friends 
of their weak points, as in the case of Timothy, 
or even sharply rebuking them for their offenses, 
as when he resisted his brother apostle "to the 
face, because he stood condemned." In Smith's 
biography of Henry Drummond we are told that 
the young Scotch evangelist possessed the grace of 



1 66 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

friendship that enabled him to offer to those he 
honored and loved criticism when truth de- 
manded it; and therein Drummond, and every 
friend of like quality, resembles the apostle who 
loved his friends too sincerely to be blind to their 
faults or indifferent as to their removal. Farrar, 
in commenting on the apostle's ability to per- 
form disagreeable duties for love's sake, toward 
his friends, quotes aptly the wise saying: "The 
words of a friend are better at all times than the 
precious balms of an enemy that break the head." 
Let us thank those who are nearest to us for their 
gentle admonitions, which, however bitter now, 
may, if we receive them, yield us sweetest fruit 
hereafter. 

" Better is a neighbor that is near than, a brother far off." 

" Faithful are the wounds of a friend : 
But the kisses of an enemy are profuse." 

" Iron sharpeneth iron ; 
So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." 

" As in water face answereth to face, 
So the heart of man to man." 

" Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart : 
So doth the sweetness of a man's friend that cometh of hearty 
counsel." * 

1 Proverbs. 



ST. PAUL THE GENTLEMAN 



How sweet and gracious, even in common speech, 
Is that fine sense which men call Courtesy ! 
Wholesome as air and genial as the light, 
Welcome in every clime as breath of flowers, — 
It transmutes aliens into trusting friends, 
And gives its owner passport round the globe. 

—J. T. Fields. 

His manners were not so much genteel as gentle. We 
should not call him a genteel man, but he was in the highest 
sense a gentleman ; with no mere outside politeness, but in- 
wardly careful of the feelings of all. — Ja?nes Freeman Clarke. 

In honor preferring one another. — Romans 12 : 10. 



VIII 

ST. PAUL THE GENTLEMAN 

Numerous students of the character of St. Paul 
have remarked upon his possession of the quali- 
ties that constitute the gentleman. Thus Cole- 
ridge, somewhere, in commenting on the great 
German reformer refers to the apostle as a gen- 
tleman: "Luther — not by any means such a 
gentleman as the apostle was," and so on. And 
in his Table Talk we find this expression of the 
same profound thinker: "St. Paul, whose man- 
ners were the finest of any man's upon record." 
Dean Stanley speaks of the apostle as the first 
example in detail of "a gentleman." Dr. Schaff 
says of the Epistle to Philemon that it " reveals a 
perfect Christian gentleman, a nobleman of na- 
ture, doubly ennobled by grace"; and Dr. J. F. 
Clarke terms it a letter "of a Christian gentle- 
man, of high principles, of exquisite tact, of deli- 
cate feeling." Professor Ramsay thus views an 
illustration of this side of the apostle's character 

as revealed in the tone of the Epistle to the Gala- 
169 



170 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

tians: "And in what a gentlemanly spirit does 
Paul refer to that visit! . . . Not even in 
this hot and hasty letter does he swerve from his 
tone of respect and admiration, or assume in the 
slightest degree a tone of superiority to Peter and 
James." Jowett quotes the comment on the 
apostle that he was "the finest gentleman that 
ever lived." Dr. J. S. Howson calls his courtesy 
" remarkable." And John Henry Newman with 
characteristic power thus states the thought: 
"There is not any one of those refinements and 
delicacies of feeling, which are the result of ad- 
vanced civilization, not any one of those pro- 
prieties and embellishments of conduct in which 
the cultivated intellect delights, but he is a pattern 
of it, in the midst of that assemblage of other 
supernatural excellencies which is the common 
endowment of apostles and saints." It will 
hence appear that we are on ground that has 
often been occupied in contemplating 5/. Paul 
the gentleman. 

We are forced to use the term gentleman to 
describe the side of the apostle's character in 
mind because, as Emerson says, "the word Gen- 
tleman has not any correlative abstract to express 
the Quality." Courtesy does not cover the 
ground; nor does gentility. To say that a man 



ST. PAUL THE GENTLEMAN 171 

is a gentleman is to ascribe to him an aggregate 
of qualities that no other word will quite repre- 
sent. What constitutes the gentleman ? We 
must rule out artificial or base elements. Family 
does not make the gentleman; for we know that 
a man may be descended from a hundred earls 
and yet be essentially a boor. Station does not 
make the gentleman ; for we have known sena- 
tors and governors who lacked both heart and 
breeding. Wealth does not make the gentle- 
man; as any one may discover from noting the 
coarseness and meanness that are not always 
strangers to steam yachts, palatial hotels and 
gilded salons. To be a gentleman is to have 
heart, but that is not all. It is to possess cour- 
tesy, but that is not all. It is to understand the 
conventionalities that govern men of the noblest 
grade, but that is not all. Shall we not say it is to 
have a pure heart plus manners ? It is essentially 
a matter of heart, since out of the abundance of 
the heart the mouth necessarily speaks. Thus 
the perfect gentleman may be one, to take the 
sense the apostle meant to be attached to his 
words, "having nothing, and yet possessing 
all things" (2 Cor. 6: 10). This corresponds to 
Emerson's thought: "The word gentleman 
. . . is made of the spirit, more than of the 



172 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

talent of man;" and it corresponds to the un- 
derstanding Burns had of his father's feeling on 
the subject: — 

" He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne'er a farthing, 
For without an honest, manly heart no man was worth re- 
garding." 

With this notion, too, we are enabled to under- 
stand what the old English poet meant when he 
said that "Christ was the first gentleman." He 
was the absolutely pure-hearted, as he pro- 
nounced the finest blessing on pure-heartedness. 
In this sense was St. Paul a gentleman. It is 
immaterial to this view — the question as to his 
origin, his material means, his official rank, or 
even as to his practice of those modern qualities 
of polish which Lord Chesterfield calls "the 
graces." It has been urged that he would not 
have proved an agreeable man in modern "so- 
ciety." The suggestion is irrelevant. It is un- 
fair to measure any man by the manners of an 
age from which he is remote. The question is, 
f was St. Paul essentially a gentleman in his own 
time, or is he that as his personality touches 
what is unchanging in the race ? To this ques- 
tion there is but one answer. 

"The gentleman," says Emerson, "is a man 
of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing 



ST. PAUL THE GENTLEMAN 173 

that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner 
dependent and servile either on persons, or opin- 
ions, or possessions." That is, there is in him a 
virile and just self-respect. He never carries the 
air of apologizing for his existence. His eye 
never droops before the gaze of any. He instinc- 
tively recognizes the dignity of his own manhood. 
Yet he has the quietness of conscious power. He 
honors himself too much to claim more than his 
due, and he never blusters. Now notice how 
the evidence of this endowment of the gentle- 
man is multiplied in the history of St. Paul. We 
can note only a few illustrations. On the morn- 
ing after the earthquake in Philippi, when the 
order of release from prison was brought to St. 
Paul and Silas from the prsetors, St. Paul gave 
this reply: "They have beaten us publicly, un- 
condemned, men that are Romans, and have 
cast us into prison; and do they now cast us out 
privily? Nay, verily; but let them come them- 
selves and bring us out" (Acts 16: 37). The self- 
respect of a true man! A similar note is distin- 
guishable in the dignified claim made to the chief 
captain on the castle stairs in Jerusalem: "I am 
a Jew, of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean 
city" (Acts 21: 39); and we almost see the 
flash of the eye and hear the clear ring to the 



i 7 4 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

voice in the reply to the same official when the 
latter speaks of having purchased his citizenship, 
— ''But I am a Roman born" (Acts 22: 28). 
For still another instance, how grandly the 
self-respect of the apostle appears in his una- 
bashed decision in the presence of Festus: "I 
appeal unto Caesar " (Acts 25 : 1 1). In the Pauline 
epistles, likewise, is this quality evidenced. Con- 
sider the honest self-vindication in this sentence 
of the message to the Galatians: " If I were still 
pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ" 
(Gal. 1 : 10); and the recognition of having well 
performed his duty in the reminder to the Thes- 
salonians: " Remember ye not, that, when I was 
yet with you, I told you these things ? " (2 Thes. 
2:5). " Self-consciousness " Dr. Howson names 
the spirit that prompts words like these; but a 
nobler term is more fitting. Entirely consist- 
ent, too, with this temper is the note of apparent 
self-depreciation we sometimes discover in the 
apostle's language. He suffers; his spoken word 
is "foolishness"; his bodily presence is weak; 
he is willing to be counted a fool. But this is 
when he contrasts himself with Christ, and con- 
siders the littleness of men at best in comparison 
with the Master. At the same time he never for- 
gets that he is a redeemed man, of high station 



ST. PAUL THE GENTLEMAN 175 

and privilege in the kingdom. He is humbled 
before Christ; but before men he is unabashed. 
Emerson's first mark of the gentleman — "lord of 
his own actions" — is clearly revealed in the char- 
acter of this apostle. 

Dr. Howson defines courtesy as "a combi- 
nation of tact and sympathy." Of both of these 
qualities of the apostle we have already spoken. 
Let us dwell briefly on another quality of his 
that is closely allied to sympathy — that is, in- 
deed, an element of it, — his unselfishness. The 
true gentleman must not be selfish. Even 
those artificial laws which constitute good man- 
ners, or etiquette, are based on the law demand- 
ing the pleasing of others rather than self. How 
much more does the heart of the gentleman 
require unselfishness as a constant habit! He 
who has polish without heart acts unselfishly ; he 
who has heart and polish both is unselfish. 
Therefore unselfishness is of the soul of good- 
breeding. Now the many illustrations of the 
unselfishness of the apostle will occur to all of 
us. Indeed, the entire history of his apostleship 
may be described as the most striking history of 
pure unselfishness on record — of course with the 
One exception. But our attention may well be 
recalled to several indications of the quality in 



176 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

question, particularly in its limited aspect of an 
entire absence of the mercenary feeling. We are 
sure, for example, that we are listening to a 
sincere statement when we hear these words to 
the Corinthians: "But I have used none of 
these things: and I write not these things that it 
may be so done in my case. . . . What then 
is my reward ? That, when I preach the gospel, 
I may make the gospel without charge" (i Cor. 
9: 15, 18). He desired nothing at Corinth for 
himself. His one thought was the salvation of 
the Corinthians. Of like tenor is his state- 
ment to the Thessalonians: " For ye remember, 
brethren, our labor and travail : working night and 
day, that we might not burden any of you, we 
preached unto you the gospel of God" (1 Thes. 
2: 9). In sentences like these we are introduced 
to the inner sanctuary of the apostle's soul, and 
we find that the holy place is wholly free from 
the contamination of greed. We often meet 
men who go into society, and endeavor to please 
in the social circle of our period with the con- 
scious motive of winning friends as a means of 
satisfying personal ambition; nor can we urge a 
sweeping censure of the motive when honestly 
restrained and guarded. But on how much 
higher a plane is the friend who cultivates us 



ST. PAUL THE GENTLEMAN 177 

altogether for our own sake, without a thought 
of his own gain! Indeed, the ideal gentleman 
will be too rich in his own resources to dream of 
finding a gold mine or a stepping-stone to power 
in his friendships. That independence is involved 
in his native lordship. The faintest trace of 
Shylock in him spoils the picture, shames the 
ideal. Though his hands be soiled with tent- 
making we expect to find a sort of kingly 
independence in him, the independence that 
prefers always to win rather than to owe an 
obligation. 

We must not fail to note that aspect of the 
apostle's unselfishness which appears in his con- 
siderateness, — an element that even more dis- 
tinctly than the absence of self-advancement lies 
at the heart of polite behavior. Hardly anything 
is more striking in the many-sided representation 
we possess of the apostle's habits of intercourse 
with the world at large than the numerous 
indications of his unfailing thoughtfulness for the 
comfort, not to say spiritual welfare, of others. 
Thus on shipboard, fiercely besieged by the 
elements, his first thought is, not for his own 
safety, but for his fellow-voyagers. What a 
revelation of character in his words to these: " I 
beseech you to take some food: for this is for 



178 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

your safely " (Acts 27 : 34). It is the same man — 
we might know without being told it — who 
pauses in a spiritual exhortation to his dearest 
disciple, when the thought of the delicate health 
of the man occurs to him, to interject the 
homely advice, "Use a little wine for thy 
stomach's sake, and thine often infirmities " 
(1 Tim. 5: 23). The same concern for the wel- 
fare of another asserts itself even in the trials 
of the last imprisonment, and leads him to refer 
to a distant sufferer: "Trophimus I left at 
Miletus sick" (2 Tim. 4: 20). And at the same 
period, much as he must have needed the min- 
istrations of every companion, he sends Epaph- 
roditus to Philippi simply because the latter was 
ill and homesick. Of the poor and afflicted he 
was ever mindful, even in the hours of his own 
deepest suffering. Characteristic is his modest 
assertion in his Galatian epistle of his thoughtful- 
ness at the beginning of his ministry concerning 
the poor saints: "Only they [the apostles in 
Jerusalem] would that we should remember the 
poor; which very thing I was also zealous to do" 
(Gal. 2: 10). These, of course, are but single 
illustrations of a distinguished lifelong spirit. 
Fittingly, therefore, has this feeling of our 
apostle toward the members of our troubled 



ST. PAUL THE GENTLEMAN 179 

humanity been described as "the generous sen- 
sibility of a heart which, by many a daily 
affliction, had learnt to throb with sympathy 
with the afflicted." * Here, we feel sure, is a 
man who does not becloud the circles he enters 
with the weight of his own sorrows; but who 
aims to make life all about him a little more 
sunny than he finds it. If agreeableness be 
the one word that best describes the effect pro- 
duced by contact with the gentleman, surely St. 
Paul must rank according to their own law far 
above the lords of the modern drawing-rooms 
and courts. Where among the sayings of 
Chesterfield are words indicative of the true 
courtier that equal the genial language we have 
quoted as a revelation of his prevailing spirit in 
social intercourse ? 

Another quality that helps to constitute the 
framework of the gentleman in St. Paul is what 
we may term his freedom from pettiness. Trifles 
light as air do not ruffle his feelings, nor inter- 
rupt the warm, steady flow of his friendships. 
There is nothing of the weasel in him. He never 
busies himself with ferreting in little corners. He 
takes large views of men and things. Hence the 
successes of others do not annoy him ; and aber- 

1 Farrar, Life and Work of Si. Paul, p. 231. 



i8o THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

rations arising from momentary error are promptly 
forgiven and forgotten. He obeys the Golden 
Rule. He quickly overlooks much in others. A 
friend of mine who is closely associated with 
another in a certain good work, referring to the 
attitude of his fellow-worker toward himself in 
view of a degree of praise that had been accorded 
by a section of the public to the first mentioned, 
said, "Oh, he is too large a man to feel any 
envy concerning my little successes! " In a vast 
sense do we find such largeness of mind in St. 
Paul. Though a party in the Corinth church has 
adopted the name of Apollos to mantle its heresy, 
he does not hesitate to send that teacher subse- 
quently to Corinth, plainly without thought of 
jealousy. As we discover in the second letter to 
that turbulent body, he promptly forgives its re- 
cent shortcomings. Though the Galatians have 
been " bewitched " since his sojourn among them, 
he cherishes no resentment, his tone toward them 
being as kind as it is plain-spoken. As has been 
said by another, " He does not indulge the habit 
of suspicion." 1 His magnanimity is distinguished. 
In chains before Agrippa, to view another illustra- 
tion, with a politeness that springs from a noble 
soul as truly as its outward expression is exquis- 

1 Howson, The Character of St. Paul. 



ST. PAUL THE GENTLEMAN 181 

itely given, he wishes that his royal hearer might 
be as himself is, " except these bonds" (Acts 
26: 29). He does not wish trouble even to a con- 
temptuous enemy. Say we not truly that here 
is a mark of a gentleman ? The import of the 
feature we have commented on to the man of 
correct breeding has been discovered by our 
greatest poet, profoundest student of human 
nature : — 

" We are gentlemen, 
That neither in our hearts, nor outward eyes, 
Envy the great, nor do the low despise." 

"Nothing," says Dr. Howson, whom we have 
so frequently quoted, "is more truly courteous 
than to assume the presence of right feeling in the 
minds of those whom we address." This intro- 
duces us to another feature of St. Paul's character 
which denotes his gentlemanly spirit no less than 
do those we have considered. We refer to his dis- 
position to fair dealing. I have heard a pleasant 
comment on Emerson to the effect that he knew 
the art of dissenting squarely from the opinions of 
others in conversation, with utmost quietness, 
though with power, without arousing the slight- 
est animosity on the part of his opponents. He 
must, then, have argued fairly, as St. Paul always 
does when he must needs contend. There could 



182 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

have been no pettifogging in his pleading; no 
attempt to disguise the truth in the contention of 
the opposite party; no undue heat; no willing- 
ness to raise a laugh from bystanders by an un- 
warrantable satire or an unchivalrous wit. Here 
is true fineness of feeling. At this point many 
who are accounted masters of courtesy fail. But 
St. Paul was not lacking in this regard. He was 
too fair even to resort to flattery — a species »of 
contempt for the understanding of those toward 
whom it is employed. " For neither at any time 
were we found using words of flattery, as ye 
know " — so he reminds the Thessalonians (i Thes. 
2: 5). And his toleration, as for instance in his 
sermons in Lystra and Athens, is familiar to all. 
Newman notes of his address to the Lycaonians 
that "he speaks of God's love to them, heathens 
though they were." Of his bitterest persecutors, 
the Jewish bigots, he manages to find some good 
to say, thus: "I bear them witness that they 
have a zeal for God" (Rom. 10: 2). In other 
words, there is not manifest in the illustrations 
we have used, nor is there elsewhere, an attempt 
to carry his point irrespective of means. His is 
genuine argumentative chivalry. He commands 
the high intellectual and moral level of doing 
justice always to his friends and antagonists; 



ST. PAUL THE GENTLEMAN 183 

and this quality goes far toward the formation of 
the heart of a gentleman. It is one thing to be a 
gentleman in the utterance of polite nothings; it 
is another to be always a gentleman in serious 
debate. There are many who have the entree to 
the parlors of the Mrs. Thrales, who are quite 
Johnsonese in the disposition to club adversaries 
with the butt end of their pistols of argument 
when they cannot disable them with the fair dis- 
charge of logic. But the complete gentleman 
must pattern after St. Paul rather than after Dr. 
Johnson, in the matter of suavity and fairness in 
their contentions. A good example here for con- 
testants for causes and principles in our churches 
and in our church courts! 

But still further, how the instinct of courtesy 
appears in the disposition to conciliate constantly 
revealed by the apostle. We have only to run 
over in mind his various sermons and addresses 
reported in The Acts to recall his practically in- 
variable habit of beginning his discourse with 
complimentary expressions. As we become 
well acquainted with the man we become con- 
vinced that this method is something better than 
a rhetorical or oratorical device. There is 
genuine kindliness in it. There is an inclina- 
tion to recognize what good there is in the 



i8 4 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

false beliefs and evil lives of the worst. The 
first syllable of his message always is a note of 
music. The first step of the pathway to the 
Cross of Christ as he outlines it is paved with 
silver. Listen to several sentences introductory 
to his sermons: "Men of Israel, and ye that 
fear God, hearken " (Acts 13: 16). "We also 
are men of like passions with you, and bring 
you good tidings" (Acts 14: 15). "Ye men of 
Athens, in all things I perceive that ye are some- 
what religious " (Acts 1 7 : 22, margin). In each in- 
stance he attempts to win his hearers at the start. 
And as we further recall, his speech before Felix 
begins with a compliment (Acts 24: 10), and that 
before Agrippa with a sentence distinctly courte- 
ous (Acts 26: 2). So, too, is his conciliatory spirit 
evidenced in the kindly greetings with which he 
begins his letters, even when his purpose is 
chiefly to rebuke. The most striking illustration, 
perhaps, is the first letter to the Corinthians, 
where he begins by naming his converts whom 
he is about to admonish sternly the "sanctified 
in Christ Jesus, called to be saints." The same 
tone appears in the initial sentences of his other 
letters, with the possible exception of that to the 
Galatians. If he can possibly find ground for 
praise or compliment, he utilizes it as a stepping- 



ST. PAUL THE GENTLEMAN 185 

stone to argument or appeal. We feel assured 
that he would not have indorsed the method of 
one of our American preachers, who began a 
sermon with the words, "Ye beggars, tramps 
and loafers!" His courtesy in public address 
was innate and pronounced. 

Finally, there is apparent in the apostle a cer- 
tain delicacy of feeling, a species of reserve, 
which leads him to respect that sacred inner 
shrine of the personalities of his friends, the in- 
vasion of which no privilege of love on his part 
could warrant. "In all things I would have the 
island of a man inviolate," says the sage of Con- 
cord. There is that deference on St. Paul's part 
to the rights and privacies of his intimates — one 
of the most refined and exquisite touches to the 
man of perfect breeding. One illustration must 
suffice, though others will readily be recalled, — 
the spirit of the Epistle to Philemon. In this 
aspect of delicacy this sweet letter is one of the 
politest messages ever sent by man to his friend. 
Where bluntness might have been pardoned as 
natural the apostle reveals only tenderness; 
where a man of rougher fiber would have ex- 
horted he rather beseeches; where an appeal to 
conscience might easily have been made we find 
instead an appeal to affection. Not a word too 



1 86 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

much is said to friend Philemon. There is 
nothing of the slapdash about the epistle. 
Hence deep insight into the writer's character has 
led to the remark, prompted by the view of this 
epistolary gem, " Paul was not a man to take a 
liberty with a friend." 1 

Perhaps there has been danger in the forego- 
ing study of our forgetting the true inspiration 
of the phase of our apostle's character under re- 
view. It should be remarked, then, with all 
the emphasis possible, that he was a fine type 
of the grand genus gentleman because he was 
a glorious type of the class Christian. Be- 
cause of the grace of God he became a master 
of "the graces" of good breeding. He himself 
ascribed his every endowment to the grace of 
God through Christ, — "By the grace of God I 
am what I am" (i Cor. 15: 10). No Tarsus 
Turveydrop had taught him his noble deport- 
ment. He had learned the art in Christ's own 
school. Early in his Christian career he had 
taken to heart the words of the Master, "It is 
more blessed to give than to receive " (Acts 
20: 35), — the primary principle of politeness of 
soul. His rules of etiquette are formulated 
in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, 

1 Farrar, The Messages of the Books, p. 347. 



ST. PAUL THE GENTLEMAN 187 

and there are none better. They shaped them- 
selves naturally in a heart truly devoted to Jesus 
Christ. 

There should be value in the view we have 
been taking for those who have been perplexed 
by the teaching of Matthew Arnold, which al- 
leges a marked distinction between Hellenism 
and Hebraism, and which claims that the key- 
note of the former is beauty, while that of the 
latter is conduct. Whatever may be said of the 
distinction, broadly speaking — and without doubt 
Professor Hunt is quite right in saying of Arnold 
that "he has thus insisted upon an antithesis 
where none in reality exists, " and in quoting 
Ruskin as alleging that "moral sensibility is 
essential to the appreciation of beauty," 1 — cer- 
tainly that distinction vanishes in the character 
of St. Paul, the best exponent of what we 
may term Christian Hebraism, on the one hand, 
and, at the same time, as shown by his remark- 
able courtesy, a perfect exponent of what we 
suppose to be meant by Hellenism, on the other. 
Truly St. Paul's gospel teaches severity only 
toward sin. As its cardinal principle is love, 
it must form beauty and agreeableness in man- 
ners, since good breeding may be defined as 

1 Homiletic Review, vol. 38, p. 403. 



188 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

love in life's minor actions. And we may believe 
that the time is at hand when it is to be under- 
stood that boorishness is essentially pagan, what- 
ever it claims for itself, while refined manners 
are a necessary blossom of the Christian's faith. 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 



The works of man inherit, as is just, 
Their author's frailty, and return to dust ; 
But Truth divine forever stands secure, 
Its head as guarded, as its base is sure ; 
Fixed in the rolling flood of endless years, 
The pillar of the eternal plan appears ; 
The raving storm and dashing wave defies, 
Built by that Architect who built the skies. 

— Cowper. 

When the Church of Christ thinks of her Head as the de- 
liverer of the soul from sin and death, as a spiritualizing pres- 
ence ever with her and at work in every believer, and as the 
Lord over all things who will come again without sin unto 
salvation, it is in forms of thought given her by the Holy Ghost 
through the instrumentality of this apostle. — Stalker. 

For I shrank not from declaring unto you the whole counsel 
of God. — Acts 20 : 2j. 



IX 

ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 

St. Paul gave the world a system of teaching 
concerning God's revelation of himself. Hence 
the title of theologian must be added to the other 
designations of this marvelous man. Indeed, 
he may be called the first Christian theologian; 
for, as Weiss says, "in his writings . . . 
Christian truth first appears as a compact 
whole." 1 Perhaps in viewing his scheme of 
truth we shall less directly look upon the char- 
acter of the apostle than in our previous studies; 
but we shall not fail at every step to see the man 
behind the system, so fully does he ever reveal 
his own personality in his message. 

The first task of the student of the apostle's 
teaching is to consider the principal features of 
his method of unfolding truth — to determine 
what Professor Stevens has aptly called his 
"thought forms." 

First among these we note his extraordinary 

1 Biblical Theology of the New Testament. 
191 



1 92 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

devotion to Scripture. He assumes that the He- 
brew sacred writings form a revelation from 
God. For that revelation he has an absolute re- 
spect. With its substance he takes no liberties. 
Thus far, indeed, he is on the level with his 
fellow-apostles. But he seems to have a wider 
knowledge of his Bible than Peter or James or 
John. It is more apparently woven into his 
system. It never fails to color his thought. His 
grasp of it may be roughly indicated by his fre- 
quent quotations from it. Consider one illustra- 
tion, his greatest epistle. Quotations from the 
Old Testament form over six per cent of the 
four hundred and thirty-three verses of that 
work. We may sum up the matter thus: how- 
ever it is conveyed to him, he never fails to in- 
terpret truth in the light of prophecy. His sys- 
tem is plainly not to be regarded as an antithesis 
to the Old Testament, but as an unfolding and 
expansion of it. 

A second feature is the evident rabbinic color- 
ing of his mental processes. This is unmistaka- 
ble. We discover it, for example, in his refer- 
ence to Christ as the " spiritual rock that fol- 
lowed" Israel (i Cor. 10:4), where the old leg- 
end of a rock that literally accompanied the 
people in their journeying is clearly in mind; 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 193 

and in his account of the law as having been 
"ordained through angels" (Gal. 3: 19), where 
a tradition concerning the Mosaic dispensation is 
appealed to; and in his mention of "Jannes and 
Jambres " (2 Tim. 3: 8), where he reveals knowl- 
edge of the rabbinic legend of the two Egyp- 
tian magicians who opposed Moses. But the 
chief illustration of his rabbinic method of hand- 
ling Scripture is his allegorical identification of 
Hagar with Mount Sinai, in the fourth chapter of 
Galatians. But while just enough trace of this 
style of interpreting revelation is visible to point 
to his early schooling, it is to be added that the 
tendency in question does not, so far as we can 
legitimately infer, lead him into error of direct 
teaching. His rabbinisms we regard as parallel 
to our modern allusions in serious speech to an- 
cient mythology. Thus if an orator describes 
Chicago as " phoenix arising from the ashes," 
no one thinks of attributing to him a belief in the 
historical reality of that remarkable bird. In other 
words, the rabbinic bent in the apostle operates 
in the sphere of his rhetoric rather than in that of 
his logic. 

A third feature is his fondness for the figures 
and terms of jurisprudence. The examples are 
numerous and well known. Among them is the 



i 9 4 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

instance where he argues concerning the law 
from the legal aspect of the marriage contract 
(Rom. 7: 1-6). Other instances are where he 
illustrates the relation of the redeemed to God 
by a reference to probate law (Rom. 8: 15-17; 
Gal. 4: 1-7). This mental characteristic is 
marked throughout. As Professor Adeney says, 
"Even when rejecting the law he treats it from 
a lawyer's point of view." * His mode of unfold- 
ing the doctrine of Justification reveals this trait 
most prominently. "The whole subject of Jus- 
tification is treated prevailingly from the legal 
point of view." 2 Probably one-sided views of 
his teachings have sometimes resulted from mis- 
takenly regarding his legal terminology as being 
necessitated by the essentials of truth with which 
he deals, instead of recognizing it as an indica- 
tion of his individual mental temperament. At 
all events, we are hardly prepared to catch his 
deepest meaning unless we make allowance for 
this bent of his particular genius. 

A fourth feature is his fondness for antithesis, 
a habit which unconsciously may have arisen, so 
far as it is a literary characteristic, from acquaint- 
ance with the balanced verse of Hebrew poetry. 
Among the examples of the employment of this 

1 New Testament Theology. 2 Ibid. 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 195 

style of thought may be mentioned his contrasts 
between Jew and Gentile, works and faith, 
Adam and Christ, and the natural body and the 
spiritual body. 

A fifth feature that may be mentioned is a 
strong disposition to trace results to their ulti- 
mate causes. Herein is an indication of a logical 
mind, or, perhaps it would be better to say, 
of a deep mind. As of two college students the 
one of weaker mental grasp is content to know, 
for instance, how a given result in algebra is ob- 
tained, while his classmate's natural superiority 
is indicated by his determination to learn the why 
of the process, so the apostle's native superiority 
of mental vigor over other thinkers in the same 
realm is shown by his greater determination to 
trace results in the divine plan to their original 
sources. Thus he traces sin back to Adam. 
"Through one man sin entered into the world" 
(Rom. 5: 12-21). "In Adam all die" (1 Cor. 
15: 22). It would appear that the psychological 
source of sin is an inscrutable mystery, since he 
does not attempt to grapple with that problem. 
Thus also he traces righteousness (the establish- 
ment of a relation of Tightness between the be- 
liever and God) back to Christ. "One died for 
all, therefore all died" (2 Cor. 5: 14). "Ye died, 



196 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col. 
3 : 3). The believer's death to guilt is here, and in 
similar other passages, traced beyond the out- 
putting of faith, to Christ's Atonement. Also 
the believer's spiritual experience finds its source 
in Christ. According to his view if the believer 
died with Christ he is also to live with him 
(Rom. 6: 8). 

A sixth feature may be described as a vividness 
of conception of vast truths, of which realities 
sin and righteousness may be given as examples. 
The quality may be described as a sort of mental 
picturesqueness— in part, at least, a racial char- 
acteristic. In his representations sin is more 
than an impersonal attribute; — it exercises force, 
it seems to be alive. It holds in bondage (Rom. 
3: 9); it governs as a master (Rom. 6: 6); it 
has the power of reviving from an inactive or inert 
state (Rom. 7: 9). And so, likewise, righteous- 
ness is looked upon objectively, not as an attri- 
bute but as a relation. It is a something that 
can almost be measured apart from personal 
character. Certainly we cannot understand St. 
Paul's meaning in the use of the terms sin and 
righteousness by a mere reference to modern 
usage in the employment of those terms. 

A seventh feature of the apostle's way of un- 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 197 

folding truth, and the last we mention, is what 
we may term his breadth of outlook. His sys- 
tem is primarily broader in reach than those of 
the other apostles, because he has learned to see 
farther. Salvation is most clearly to him a gift 
for all. As Godet puts it: "His Son, the 
heathen: these two notions were necessarily (to 
St. Paul) correlative. The revelation of the one 
must accompany that of the other. This relation 
between the divinity of Christ and the univer- 
sality of his kingdom is the key to the preamble 
to the Epistle to the Romans." ? This remarkable 
breadth of the Pauline spirit may doubtless be 
traced to a variety of sources. It is partly no 
doubt due, we must believe, to the manner of 
the apostle's conversion. "It was not as a Jew 
but as a man that he had been dealt with in his 
conversion." 2 Undoubtedly it was due largely to 
his acquaintance with a larger circle in his min- 
istry than those of the other apostles. But it 
was, we believe, chiefly due to his recognition of 
the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit upon 
the heathen. These different causes combined 
to give him a breadth of vision that was not 
Jewish but Hellenic; and because of its posses- 
sion his system presents him as a great world 

1 Romans, Introduction, p. 12. 3 Stalker, The Life of St. Paul. 



198 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

teacher, — apostle to the Gentiles, preacher to 
the ages! 

It is not my purpose to discuss at length the 
Pauline theology. A condensed and brief out- 
line of its leading features is all that our plan calls 
for. The chief sources of information concern- 
ing this vast and important subject are, of 
course, the epistles to the Romans and Galatians; 
though all of the Pauline letters, save, perhaps, 
that to Philemon, as well as the book of The 
Acts, offer contributions to its full treatment. 1 
The central thought of the entire system we deem 
to be this: God's declaration of Tightness of re- 
lation on the pari of humanity toward himself a 
gracious gift for all; a gift revealed in and 
through the divine-human Christy and received 
by trust (Rom. y. 22). 

In St. Paul's teaching the divine nature stands 
forth as absolutely holy. The truth of the holi- 
ness of God underlies all representations of the 
divine dealings with humanity. This holiness, 
which is of the essence of God, is evidenced by 
the fact that he cannot tolerate sin. Against sin 
his wrath burns. The " wrath of God is re- 
vealed from heaven against all ungodliness and 



1 It will be noticed that the non-Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews is assumed throughout this work. 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 199 

unrighteousness of men" (Rom. 1 : 18). But the 
holiness of God operates in another way. It 
works not only to destroy sin but also to reveal 
mercy to the sinner. The divine mercy is an es- 
sential and necessary element of the divine holi- 
ness. God is "rich in mercy" (Eph. 2: 4); 
mercy inheres in the divine nature. This mercy 
has been revealed to all, Jew and heathen — to 
"every nation" (Acts 17:26). It is to be empha- 
sized that the Gentile world has not been over- 
looked in its manifestation (Rom. 15:9). " That 
which may be known of God is manifest in 
them "(Rom. 1: 19). Hence men are "vessels 
of mercy" (Rom. 9: 23). But there is another 
way of viewing the divine holiness: it may be 
looked on as love. God's love prompted the gift 
of the divine Son for the world's redemption. 
"God commendeth his own love toward us, in 
that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for 
us" (Rom. 5:8; cf. Eph. 2: 4). It is to be seen, 
further, that God has planned the salvation of 
every member of the human family who trusts 
him as he reveals himself in Christ. Christians 
may declare, God has "foreordained us unto 
adoption as sons through Jesus Christ " (Eph. 1 : 
5 ; cf. Rom. 9 : 11; 1 Cor. 2 : 7). 
The apostle's teaching concerning sin is very 



2oo THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

important, but we can only glance at his treat- 
ment of the theme. Plainly, to his mind, sin is 
the largest, dreadfullest, shamefullest fact con- 
cerning humanity prior to redemption. As to 
its source, it has proceeded from some original 
catastrophe. This catastrophe occurred at the 
origin of human history, and sprang from an in- 
dividual. "Through one man" it entered the 
world (Rom. 5 : 12) ; and that man was " Adam " 
(1 Cor. 15: 22). The consequences of sin to all 
subsequent to Adam are guilt and death. By 
nature men since then have been "children of 
wrath" (Eph. 2: 3), and death has reigned over 
them (Rom. 5: 17); for "in Adam all die" 
(1 Cor. 15: 22). Unbelievers are "dead through" 
"trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2: 1). Not one apart 
from Christ, Jew or heathen, has ever escaped 
from the venom of sin; condemnation has come 
upon every child of Adam; the "judgment came 
unto all men to condemnation" (Rom 5: 18; 
also, Rom. 1 and 2). But human guilt before 
God is not to be understood as arbitrarily imputed 
to men because they are descendents of Adam; 
the disposition to sin is universal, and guilt in 
each case arises from sin voluntarily committed, 
Condemnation has passed upon all, "for that all 
sinned" (Rom. 5: 12). Such is our imperfect 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 201 

outline of the teaching of St. Paul concerning the 
most frightful fact of the universe. 

Sin being the universal and only too evident 
fact in the sphere of humanity, the question 
arises, How secure deliverance from its conse- 
quences ? This is the problem of the ages. To 
the unlocking of the problem St. Paul addresses 
himself with the superbest effort of his super- 
natural genius in the Epistle to the Romans. 
There are two conceivable ways of getting de- 
liverance from the guilt and power of sin, the 
way of the law and the way of grace. First, 
then, what in brief does the apostle teach con- 
cerning the law ? Apparently, (though he uses 
the term in various senses) when the apostle 
contrasts law and grace he uses the former term 
in the sense of the divine will as embodied in the 
Old Covenant. We infer that this is the Pauline 
meaning to be attached to law as a conceivable 
method of access to God's favor from what he 
states as its various qualities and offices. It is 
holy and good. "The law is holy" (Rom. 
7: 12). It is "spiritual" (Rom. 7: 14). Nega- 
tively, it is not sin (Rom. 7: 7). It also harmo- 
nizes with God's promises (Gal. 3: 21). Further- 
more, it has been designed to prepare the way 
for Christ, by revealing to man his sin, and 



202 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

strengthening the consciousness of it. It u came 
in that the trespass might abound" (Rom. 
5: 20). Paul declares that he himself "had not 
known sin except through the law" (Rom. 
7: 7 ff.). In other words, this holy will of God, 
when he became aware of it, showed him that 
his sin was sin. Thus the law may be spoken 
of as an instructor. "The law hath been our 
tutor to bring us unto Christ" (Gal. 3: 24), 
plainly, by showing us our helplessness apart 
from God as he is revealed in Christ. Yet the 
law was not intended as a substitute for faith in 
Christ. Here precisely has lain the mistake of 
the Pharisees, and of the Judaizers, who have 
opposed the apostle's teaching among his con- 
verts. They have regarded the law as an end in 
itself, instead of as a means of availing of the 
gracious work of Christ. The law itself is holy, 
but when its purpose is misunderstood there 
may be an employment of it that is not holy. 
The unholy worship of its outward forms, then, 
is what the apostle has in mind when, along 
with those representations of it we have men- 
tioned, he describes its observances as " rudi- 
ments of the world " (Gal. 4:3), and " weak and 
beggarly rudiments" (Gal. 4: 9); and when he 
treats of circumcision, the leading outward sym- 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 203 

bol of allegiance to it, as an antithesis to Christ 
(Gal. 5: 2). This false employment of law, 
further, is in the apostle's mind, evidently, when 
he declares that rightness of relation to God is 
not to be had through the law (e. g., Gal. 2: 21). 
The law then is from God; it is holy; and it is 
designed to point to Christ. It would seem, 
therefore, that a perfect or ideal obedience to it 
would involve a laying hold of God's righteous- 
ness as revealed in Christ, since Christ is the end 
of the law. In a sense the law involves Christ. 
He "is the end of the law unto righteousness" 
(Rom. 10: 4). But no one can keep the law of 
himself, for the simple reason that while it pre- 
sents to man prohibitions and positive commands, 
it of itself supplies no vital force to a dead soul 
that is requisite to secure the observance of its 
requirements. Hence the law as an instrument 
of salvation from sin always has been, and al- 
ways must be, a failure. No man ever yet was 
saved by law alone. 

Obedience to law being an impracticable 
means of salvation, there remains but one other 
method of securing the happy result toward 
which the law has pointed; and that is divine 
grace. What men cannot secure of themselves 
God has offered as a free gift. Christians living 



2o 4 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

under the New Dispensation are saved by grace: 
" by grace have ye been saved" (Eph. 2: 5). And 
the Old Testament saints likewise were saved by 
grace; for God's promise, for example to Abra- 
ham, was "according to grace" (Rom. 4: 16 ff.). 
It is an error, therefore, to speak of the New 
Dispensation, in contradistinction to the Old, as 
the dispensation of grace. Grace, in both New 
Testament and Old Testament times, has been 
the only practicable method of salvation. In 
numerous passages the apostle magnifies grace as 
the great means of delivering man from sin and 
death (cf. Rom. 5: 2, 20, 21 ; 1 1 : 6; Eph. 2: 8; 
4: 7, etc.). Indeed, we need not say that none 
of the other apostles have so grandly developed 
the glorious doctrine of salvation by grace as 
has St. Paul. 

But if God has designed to offer men salvation 
as a fruit and pledge of his grace there must be 
some striking means of revealing that grace, 
some wondrous embodiment of his will freely 
to pardon and save. Such an embodiment of 
divine grace has appeared in Jesus Christ, the 
Lamb slain from the beginning of the world. 
We therefore must pause here to outline in part 
the teaching of St. Paul concerning the person of 
Christ. He presents Christ as the Messiah of 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 205 

prophecy (Acts 18: 5); as truly human — of "the 
seed of David " (Rom. 1 : 3) ; as wholly sinless 
(2 Cor. 5: 21); as an infallible teacher (1 Cor. 
7: 10); as the Lord (Rom. 5:1); as the founder 
of an organization — "the firstborn among many 
brethren" (Rom. 8: 29); as truly divine — the 
"Lord of all" (Rom. 10: 12-14); as preexistent 
(2 Cor. 8: 9; Phil. 2: 5-1 1); as God's own Son 
(Rom. 8: 3); as in a sense subordinate to the 
Father (Rom. 9: 5); as the image of the invisible 
God (Col. 1: 15); as wedded to the Church 
(Eph. 5: 2)), and as the head of it (Eph. 5: 30); 
and as the end of all things (Col. 1 : 20). By 
bringing representations like these together we 
discover how impossible it is to deny either the 
complete humanity or the complete divinity of 
Christ in the light of the Pauline teaching. 
"Christ, . . . being the eternal Son of God, 
became man, and so was, and continueth to be, 
God and man, in two distinct natures, and one 
person, forever." 

But how, in the apostle's view, has Christ 
embodied the grace of God? The answer to 
that inquiry brings us to the Pauline teaching 
concerning Christ's redemptive work. Christ 
Jesus is the ever-living, divine-human instrument 
of redemption. He represents the divine will 



2o6 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

and efficiency in effecting that wondrous result. 
"God was in Christ reconciling the world unto 
himself" (2 Cor. 5: 19). In a nobly mystical 
sense he and his people died together on the 
cross (Gal. 2: 20). It is the whole of Christ — 
the divine-human — that has wrought our release 
from guilt and death; "it is Christ Jesus that 
died" (Rom. 8: 34). The atoning death of 
Christ is the most striking element of his 
redemptive work; the gladsome account of the 
matter is "the word of the Cross" (1 Cor. 
1: 18, etc.). But another element, likewise, not 
to be overlooked, is his resurrection. He was 
"delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised 
for our justification" (Rom. 4: 25). And it is to 
be noted that the obedience of Christ is the 
central fact of his eternal mission as Saviour. 
" Through the obedience of the One" righteous- 
ness is accomplished (Rom. 5: 19). The apostle 
attaches different names to the redemptive work 
of our Lord. He calls it "redemption" (Rom. 
3: 24); and "reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5: 18); and 
also "propitiation" (Rom. 3: 25). As to the 
motive of Christ's mission the apostle sometimes 
describes it as "righteousness " (e. g., Rom. 3 : 25), 
and sometimes as " love " (Rom. 5:8). But love 
as the more general term may be taken to 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 207 

cover the ground. In Christ "God commend- 
eth his love to us." The specific results of re- 
demption for Christ's people are variously set 
forth. They are described as freedom from con- 
demnation (Rom. 8: 1); destruction of sin (Rom. 
8: 3); deliverance from the world (Gal. 1:4); 
and the imparting of life— Christians are a new 
"lump" (1 Cor. 5: 7). The one general term 
descriptive of the results of redemption is — a 
new creation in place of the natural man. The 
general object of redemption may be stated as 
—the destruction of sin. 

Paul's most splendid work as a teacher is re- 
vealed in his unfolding of the great truths re- 
lating to the person and offices of Christ. At 
this point we touch the high-water mark of his 
matchless instruction. 

But how shall humanity avail itself of the fruits 
of this divine service in its behalf? The answer 
is — Faith. But to determine what St. Paul 
means by faith in his great epistles we must 
not be content to look to the popular usage of 
the term, but must carefully study the various 
connections in which he uses the word. We 
discover that by faith as the mode of justifica- 
tion St. Paul does not mean credulity, nor mere 
intellectual assent. It is first of all belief in a 



208 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

Person, — ''Jesus Christ" (Gal. 2: 16). Also, it 
is an outputting of soul that involves the pos- 
session of "the spirit of Christ" (Rom. 8: 10). 
It is a sharing with Christ of a common spiritual 
life principle. Furthermore, obedience is of its 
essence (Rom. 16: 26). Still further, it works 
through love (Gal. 4: 14). And its direct issue 
is goodness. Hence on the human side it 
originates in the will. The faith that lays 
hold of redemption, then, is not a simple, 
but a complex, act. The simplest definition 
of it is, trust in Christ. And he who has this 
trust, with all that it involves, is justified — in 
other terms, he is declared to be in a right 
relation to God. 

The end of faith, then, is Justification. Vol- 
umes have been written about justification, but 
we know of no better account of the topic in 
brief phrasing than that of Professor Adeney: 
"It is now admitted that the idea of justifica- 
tion which passed over from Judaism to Chris- 
tianity is not that of an ethical change — the 
making a bad man good. Indisputably it sig- 
nifies clearing from a charge of guilt, or 
even a more general vindication of righteous- 
ness where no change has been made — not 
making right, but declaring a person to be right, 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 209 

and then, by a natural transition, treating him 
as right." 1 

He who has been justified through his trust in 
Christ, as a work of divine grace, is, according 
to St. Paul, a "new creation." No longer does 
he grovel in the dust, no more does he find 
enjoyment in conscious sin. His face is set 
Godward. His affection is on things above. 
Rich is the teaching of the apostle concerning 
the features of the faith life. It is contemplated 
under various aspects. We mistake in attending 
exclusively to any one representation, such as 
the mystical phrase "in Christ," as though it 
were the sole definition of Christian character. 
The believer is a being who is "in Christ" 
(2 Cor. 5: 17, etc.). He is also one who has a 
consciousness of sonship, he cries "Abba, 
Father!" (Rom. 8: 16). He is a being who 
lives in the sphere of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8: 9). 
He likewise is one who bears the fruits produced 
by the Spirit — his character is clean (Gal. 5 : 22, 
2}). He is in the line of spiritual knowledge 
(1 Cor. 2: 14, 15). He is free from the fetters of 
sin (Rom. 8: 2). He is a worker for God (Phil. 
2: 12, 13; 3: 13). He is in a state of warfare 
against evil forces (2 Tim. 4: 7). And his 

1 Theology of the New Testament, p. 197. 



210 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

knowledge is progressive (i Cor. 13: 12), as is 
his spirituality (1 Cor. 3: 1, 2; Phil. 3: 12-14). 
These are among Paul's various accounts of the 
nature of the human life that is ''hid with Christ 
in God." 

We must not fail to note the apostle's highly 
important teaching concerning the Holy Spirit. 
Plainly he regards the Spirit as a divine Person, 
distinct from the Father and from the Son while 
of the substance of the Godhead, whose office is 
to supply the grace of the absent Christ, and 
who is ever the vital force in the life of the be- 
liever. He is omniscient (1 Cor. 2: 10, 11). In 
him we are justified (1 Cor. 6: 11). It is he who 
gives us assurance of our adoption into God's 
family (Rom. 8: 15). He guides us in all profit- 
able study of the Scriptures (1 Cor. 2: 13). He 
directs us in true worship (Phil. 3:3). He 
frames for us the petitions of true prayer (Rom. 
8: 26, 27). He assures us of God's love for us 
(Rom. 5: 5). He is the source of joy (1 Thes. 
1 : 6). He assigns to us our peculiar spiritual 
gifts ( 1 Cor. 12: 11). And he is the soul and 
inspiration of church unity (Eph. 4:3). Of 
course this meager outline of the apostle's doc- 
trine of the Holy Spirit might easily be expanded 
into a volume. 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 211 

All this is but a fraction of the rich theological 
system of St. Paul. I have not, for instance, 
dwelt on his important teaching concerning the 
Family, or the State, or the Church, or the Future 
Life. It has been my design to emphasize mainly 
the more prominent points of his system so far 
as it relates to sin and deliverance from it. But 
an outline like this, meager as it is, is sufficient to 
indicate the wealth of the sublime legacy of truth 
concerning Christ and his Church that our 
apostle has left for the instruction of the ages. 1 

The fact that each of the apostle's greater 
epistles consists of two divisions — the doctrinal 
followed by the practical— is one of the indica- 
tions of his logical bent; and it also serves as a 
perpetual reminder that theory and practice are 
not to be divorced in the believer's life rule or the 
Christian teacher's method. Truth and practical 
holiness, the two correlates of the apostle's 
teaching, — each is the half-orb of the true life. 
They are mutually dependent. Truth alone is 
cold, unfeeling, non-lovable, anti-social; and, on 



1 A discussion, however condensed, of St. Paul's ethical system would 
lead me too far from my chosen path. One point, however, I must express 
an opinion upon — the apostle's attitude toward marriage. I read i Cor. 7 
in connection with such passages, for example, as Eph. 5 : 22, 23, — where 
marriage is almost exalted into a sacrament,— and 1 Tim. 5 : 14,— where 
"the younger women" are advised to marry, — and I hold accordingly that 
it is an error to charge their author with unfriendliness to the married state. 



212 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

the other hand, conduct alone, which does not 
rest on a system of truth, however fair to the 
sight, is a house without a foundation. Hence 
all true preaching must present the two ele- 
ments. Its end is not belief, and it is not con- 
duct; but it is belief revealed in action. 

Is St. Paul's teaching absolutely reliable ? In 
other words, is that teaching to be regarded as a 
part of the gospel, or is it to be regarded rather 
as a comment on the gospel ? Does the apostle 
infallibly present the divine thought concerning 
the character and offices of Christ, and concern- 
ing the character and life of the Church of God ? 
Or is there an antithesis between St. Paul and 
Christ ? We cannot impeach the trustworthi- 
ness of the apostle, and hence we must not 
sympathize with the spirit behind the cry that 
has been heard of late,— "Back from Paul to 
Christ! " For the apostle claims to have received 
his 'apostleship from the Lord himself; and he 
distinctly claims to teach under direct super- 
natural revelation from Christ. He tells the 
Galatians concerning the gospel which he has 
been preaching — and this indicates beyond the 
slightest doubt his own claim as to the source 
and authority of his message, — "Neither did I 
receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 213 

came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ " 
(Gal. 1 : 12). This is a vital utterance, a key- 
text. With it harmonize other statements where 
a similar claim of a special revelation is made 
(e. g., 1 Cor. 9: 1); with it harmonizes the 
significance of his various visions and his under- 
standing of them; and there also harmonizes 
with it a general tone of his utterances, namely, 
that, of certainty and emphasis concerning 
alleged truths pertaining to Christ which no man 
could ever have attained to originally by any 
means short of a supernatural revelation. Since, 
then, he clearly believes and claims that he has 
received such a revelation, we must either admit 
his claim or impeach his rationality. He is a 
genuine mouthpiece of Christ, or he is an 
enthusiast. But that he is no mere enthusiast 
appears from his confident appeal to the manifest 
signs of his apostleship that were recognized by 
those he primarily addressed. 

There is another way of approaching the 
question of St. Paul's reliability, and that is by 
remarking on the antecedent probability of such 
a revelation from Christ as we believe he re- 
ceived. Christ at the very last informed his 
disciples that there was truth to be revealed to 
them thereafter which they had not yet learned. 



2i 4 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

" I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye 
cannot bear them now" (John 16: 12). To un- 
fold this revelation subsequent to his death he 
promised the Holy Spirit, and, as a means in 
some transcendent sense to be identified there- 
with, he promised himself. ''He shall guide 
you into all the truth." " I will come unto 
you." According to the divine Mind itself, 
then, the gospel record is not to close with the 
history of the four evangelists. A revelation is 
to follow the Resurrection and the Ascension, 
where the record of the four ends. Since, then, 
in the nature of things, a complete gospel must 
deal with a complete Christ, we could not but 
regard the mere narrative of the events of the 
earthly life of our Lord as a fragmentary gospel. 
The entire gospel must involve a contemplation 
of the ascended, glorified Christ, and an account 
of the kingdom of God in the light of his full 
kingship. Now where are we to look for this 
revelation supplementary to that granted to the 
four evangelists ? What more reasonable to be- 
lieve than that to St. Paul in the light of the 
peculiar features of his supernatural call was 
principally intrusted the supreme privilege and 
task of receiving from above and recording the 
thought of God concerning those gospel principles 



■■■ 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 215 

less fully unfolded by the earlier sacred writers ? 
Principally, we say; for in the matter of author- 
ity apart from quality and extent of teaching 
we may not claim superiority for St. Paul 
as a vehicle of revelation in contrast with his 
fellow-apostles. 

As Professor Adeney says: "St. Paul laid claim 
to a specific apostolic mission, with a gospel re- 
ceived not from man but direct from Christ, 
and a full share in the new gifts of the Spirit. If a 
great outpouring of the Holy Ghost on the Church, 
with a more specific illumination for the apostles, 
is to be accepted as a central fact in the history of 
these times, it is simply unreasonable to expect 
that so potent an influence should not have left 
its stamp in a most marked degree on such a man 
as the great apostle to the Gentiles." 1 And as 
Professor Wilkinson declares: "Our option is 
not 'Christ or Paul.' 'God forbid!' I seem to 
hear St. Paul himself, after his manner, fervently 
saying. Our option is not ' The Christ of the gos- 
pels or the Christ of Paul's epistles.' Our true 
option is, ' The Christ partially revealed in the gos- 
pels and in the epistles.' " 2 There is a contrast, 
indeed, between the gospels and the Pauline epis- 



1 Theology of the New Testament. 
3 Homileiic Review, vol. 38, p. 1 14. 



2i 6 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

ties; but it is the contrast simply between 
the root and the tree, between truth and more 
truth. The relation is not of opposition but of 
expansion. 

Yet we are not to hold that finality attaches to 
the teaching of our apostle. The end of truth is 
unattainable on earth. There is more to Christ 
and the gospel than St. Paul ever discovered. Pro- 
gressiveness of knowledge concerning the things 
of God, the apostle himself clearly teaches. ' ' Now 
we know in part," he writes, speaking of the mir- 
ror light of human wisdom at its clearest in con- 
trast with the face-to-face light of the heavenly 
life (i Cor. 13: 9). But since he received his 
message from a source higher than human, new 
light springing from the gradual mind move- 
ment of the Church under the guidance of the 
Holy Spirit may reveal new meaning and beauty 
in his thought, but it cannot weaken its force or 
dominion. 

Next after the Man of Galilee, no person has 
exerted so vast an influence over the thought 
and life of humanity during the past nineteen cen- 
turies as has St. Paul, the theologian. The un- 
dying, ever enlarging vitality of his thought is 
evidenced strikingly by the new literature that is 
constantly appearing under the inspiration of his 



ST. PAUL THE THEOLOGIAN 217 

teaching. The world does not tire of him and his 
instruction. So long as men struggle against sin, 
and so long as the human mind is inclined to 
grapple with the transcendental problems of 
grace, redemption, and the future life, so long 
will Christian intelligences continue to welcome 
earnest, sympathetic comments on the method 
and substance of his system of teaching. He 
stands before the mind of the ages as the great- 
est exponent of the life and teaching of the 
divine Master. 

Even among those who are not to be classed as 
evangelical there are not wanting men of power 
and even genius who do not hesitate reverently 
to pay to him high tributes of admiration and re- 
spect on the ground of his wondrous apprehen- 
sion of the mind of Jesus, and his consequent 
priceless contribution to the thought of the cen- 
turies. With the words of one of the greatest of 
these on our continent we close: — 

"Paul, more than anyone else, has gone down 
into the mind of Jesus. His doctrine in the ear- 
liest times turned a Jewish religion into one 
adapted to all mankind. It transferred Christian- 
ity from Asia to Europe. It broke down, in the 
beginning, the attempt to narrow it into the di- 
mensions of a Jewish sect. . . . He gave a fresh 



2i 8 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

impulse to human thought, and the force of this 
movement is not yet exhausted. Augustine, Lu- 
ther, Pascal, and Wesley, have each, in turn, re- 
ceived from the apostle Paul the mighty influ- 
ence which awakened their spiritual natures. 
His place in universal history is in the front rank 
of those who create a new epoch in civilization 
and progress." 1 

1 James Freeman Clarke, The Ideas of St. Paul. 



ST. PAUL'S CHRISTLIKENESS 



Oh, no, my dear, it is to pray, to pray as God would have us ; 
this is what at times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe 
me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason 
and the will . . . that is the last, the greatest achievement 
of the Christian's warfare on earth. Teach us to pray, O 
Lord! — Coleridge — Table Talk. 

Only when we have freely given ourselves to the most merci- 
ful God do we know what it is indeed to pray, to speak to God 
with that trustful yet reverent familiarity which becomes chil- 
dren who feel that they have and can have no secrets to hide 
from their Father in heaven. Only when we have presented 
ourselves unreservedly to God as a living sacrifice, can we taste 
the joy of an untroubled conscience, and of a true inward peace 
of soul, and of a moral assurance of salvation, through His most 
precious death, who makes our self-oblation an acceptable 
reality. — L iddon. 

To me to live is Christ — Phil, i : 21. 



X 

ST. PAUL'S CHRISTLIKENESS 

In Chapter II. the determining principle of the 
apostle's character and work is spoken of. We 
are now and finally to consider the main features 
of his spirituality; or, in other words, to glance 
at the outline of the picture of Christ as it is 
reflected from his spirit. Faith is the tree, 
rooted in divine grace ; Christlikeness is the 
golden fruit, borne on branches that reach into 
the heavens. 

The visions of St. Paul must not be overlooked 
as a factor in his spiritual experience. We ac- 
cept the record of them as historical, but we can- 
not explain them. Neander has well said, 
"We know not the law according to which the 
communications of a higher spiritual world to 
men living in the world of sense take place, so 
as to be able to determine anything concerning 
them." It is idle to try to analyze or describe 
the glory or language of heaven, or the mode of 
their occasional manifestation in the souls of men 



222 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

on the earth. It is enough to know that there 
are capacities in the human soul that enable it in 
exceptional instances literally to hear voices from 
heaven and to behold heavenly forms, and to be 
thus cheered and inspired. In the threefold ac- 
count of the first of these visions of St. Paul we 
are to understand that Christ actually appeared 
in visible form to his prostrate servant (Acts 9, 
22, 26). We regard it not as a dream, nor as a 
figment of an exalted imagination, but as a mat- 
ter of genuine sense perception. In the case of 
Christ's appearance to the praying convert in the 
temple it is not so clear that it was a matter of per- 
ception by the outer sense; it was in " a trance " 
— possibly to the inner sight — that the Lord ap- 
peared with his strengthening command. Con- 
cerning the other instances, — the approach of 
Ananias (Acts 9: 12); the appearance of the man 
of Macedonia in Troas (Acts 16: 9); the encour- 
aging word of the Lord in the dark hour in Corinth 
(Acts 18: 9, 10); the presence and encouraging 
prophecy of Christ in the Jerusalem prison (Acts 
2y. 11); the uplifting to the third heaven and 
the hearing of " unspeakable words " (2 Cor. 12: 
1-4); and the appearance of the angel on ship- 
board with his message of courage (Acts 27: 23, 
24) — concerning these we can only accept the 



ST. PAUL'S CHRISTLIKENESS 223 

history as it is written, leaving it reverently in its 
native nimbus of sacred mystery. The fact that 
these experiences always coincided with solemn 
crises of the apostle's career has received fre- 
quent comment. Perhaps they may be described 
as supernatural revelations to oppose temptations 
of unique power, an extraordinary force from 
above to meet an extraordinary spiritual need. 
At all events, the supernatural element in St. 
Paul's experience must not be left out of account 
in a just description of his character. Our fail- 
ure to lay constant emphasis on this factor in our 
portraiture of several sides of our subject has not 
been, indeed, unintentional. Wherever it has 
been possible to explain the apostle's spirit and 
work in the light of the ordinary processes of 
grace, we have magnified the ordinary rather than 
the extraordinary sources of his power in order 
to show how essentially human and thus far im- 
itable he was. But we have never overlooked the 
fact that his spiritual genius was shaped in part 
by special and unusual revelations from God. 1 

1 We should not, of course, overlook the extent to which the apostle was 
an agent of the supernatural. The main references in The Acts to his 
miracles are these: Chaps. 13: 11; 14: 3, 8-10; 16: 16-18; 19: n, 12; 20: 10; 
28: 8, 9. Interesting questions for the student of the subject are: Wherein 
does St. Paul's power of working miracles differ from that of Jesus? To 
what extent is his consciousness of this power discoverable in the quality of 
his faith and zeal ? His distinct claim to possession of this power is not to 
be lost sight of (see Rom. 15: 19; 2 Cor. 12: 12). 



224 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

But the one cause of his splendid resemblance 
to the Master which involves all lesser influences 
was the Holy Spirit. He was kept in close touch 
with Christ throughout his apostleship by a force 
that acted upon his soul from without — a force 
not innate but heaven-born. This, indeed, is the 
sum of the whole matter. In his missionary 
career he was, in a rare sense, Spirit-led. In no 
other history is the Holy Spirit so honored as in 
The Acts. But the inner as well as the outer life 
currents of this arch saint were shaped by the 
Paraclete. He approached nearer than others 
have to Christ's ideal because above his brethren 
he followed the leadings of the Spirit. 

The leading feature of the spirituality of the 
apostle was his habit of prayer. He imitated 
Christ in this, first of all, that he lived in the at- 
mosphere of communion with the Father. It 
must ever prove a surprise to him who inquires 
into the matter for the first time to learn how 
largely prayer figures in St. Paul's experience. 
We often comment on the value Luther attached 
to prayer; we have been struck with the deeply 
devotional spirit of men of vast intellectual equip- 
ment, like Coleridge and Gladstone; we have 
noted how necessary prayer has proved to the 
princes of Christian missions, like Eliot, and 



ST. PAUL'S CHRISTLIKENESS 225 

Brainerd, and Judson, and Livingstone; but we 
can hardly doubt that none of these has made so 
much of prayer as did this father of missions. 
Prayer was truly the ozone of his soul's breath. 

In considering the instances of his prayers 
mentioned by Luke — a list of no mean propor- 
tions — it might be profitable to group together 
the references to his prayers in his own behalf, 
and to place in another group the references to 
his prayers for others. In the first group would 
fall such instances as his prayer immediately sub- 
sequent to his conversion, in the house of Judas 
in Damascus, — "Behold he prayeth " (Acts 9: 
11); and that of his prayer in the temple, later, 
when in his trance he saw and heard the Lord 
(Acts 22: 17); and that of the prayer meeting he 
and Silas held in prison in Philippi after their 
scourging (Acts 16: 25); and that of his outpour- 
ing of soul to God in the presence of the elders 
at Miletus on the occasion of his farewell to them 
(Acts 20: 36) ; and that of the gathering for prayer 
on the beach at Tyre in company with the Chris- 
tians of the place, men and women and chil- 
dren (Acts 21: 6); and that of the utterance of 
his thanks to God at the Market of Appius and 
the Three Taverns when he was met by friends 
from Rome (Acts 28: 15). In instances like these 



226 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

we discover the apostle at prayer for wisdom, 
guidance, strength, — for himself, or in view of 
the situation in which he is placed. 

Among the definite instances mentioned of his 
prayers for the welfare of others we may men- 
tion that when, in connection with the ordina- 
tion of elders on his first missionary journey, he 
and Barnabas "prayed with fasting" (Acts 14: 
23); and that in connection with the healing of 
the father of Publius, "unto whom Paul en- 
tered in, and prayed, and laying his hands on him 
healed him" (Acts 28:8). 

Then, too, a student of the prayerfulness of 
the apostle would not fail to note the many ref- 
erences to his prayers and his habit of prayer 
that he himself makes. Thus he tells the Thes- 
salonian saints, "We give thanks to God al- 
ways for you all, making mention of you in our 
prayers" (1 Thes. 1:2). He is " always " talk- 
ing about them to God. A little later he repeats 
to the same friends the fact of his unceasing 
thanksgiving to God on their account,— "We 
also thank God without ceasing" (1 Thes. 2: 13); 
and still again he tells the same class that " night 
and day "he is "praying exceedingly " that he 
might be permitted to see them in person (1 Thes. 
3: 10); and in his second letter to the same 



ST. PAUL'S CHRISTLIKENESS 227 

people, as though that were the best proof of 
his constant loyalty to them, he repeats the as- 
sertion of his habit of remembering them before 
God, — "We pray always for you" (2 Thes. 
1 : 1 1). In the letter to the Romans we find ex- 
pressions like this: "I thank my God through 
Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is pro- 
claimed throughout the whole world" (Rom. 
1:8); or this: "Unceasingly I make mention of 
you, always in my prayers making request, if by 
any means now at length I may be prospered by 
the will of God to come unto you" (Rom. 1 :g, 10). 
In the Corinthian epistles we recall references to 
his thanks to God concerning the saints in Corinth 
(e. g. 1 Cor. 1 : 4), and the familiar reference to 
his threefold prayer for the removal of his thorn 
in the flesh (2 Cor. 12: 8). He tells his readers 
in the Ephesian letter that he ceases not to 
give thanks for them, making mention of them 
in his prayers, that they might secure "a spirit 
of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of" 
Christ (Eph. 1: 15-17). So, too, he reminds the 
Colossians that he is "praying always" for 
them (Col. 1 : 3, 9, 10). And every "remem- 
brance" of his beloved friends in Philippi leads 
him to supplication in their behalf, " with joy" 
(Phil. 1 : 3-7). In his first letter to Timothy we 



228 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

hear him thanking God for enabling grace (i Tim. 
i: 12); and he tells his younger brother in the 
second letter that his remembrance of him 
before God is "unceasing," (2 Tim. 1: 3). To 
Philemon also he writes, "I thank my God al- 
ways, making mention of thee in my prayers " 
(Philemon 4). The frequent use of the word " al- 
ways " in these references is significant. How 
much of the time of this busiest of Christian work- 
ers was spent in prayer ? Must we not infer that 
never a day passed without its own hour of prayer ? 
Are we wrong in supposing that whole days 
were at different periods devoted in this life 
crowded with activities to solemn communion 
with God ? Nor can we doubt that the secret of 
his sustained strength and of his vast labors, 
with their magnificent results, finds its solution 
largely in the fact of this habit of prayer. It is 
through feeding on the fruits of prayer that the 
soul's life is renewed like the eagle's. 

Then, still further, let us consider the apostle's 
exhortations to prayer which we feel sure are 
justly to be regarded as an indication of his own 
practice. Listen to his injunction to the Thes- 
salonians: "Pray without ceasing; in every- 
thing give thanks" (1 Thes. 5: 17); and his 
request, "Pray for us" (1 Thes. 5:25). Hear 



ST. PAUL'S CHRISTLIKENESS 229 

his request for the prayers of the same people 
for himself: "Brethren, pray for us, that the 
word of the Lord may run and be glorified " 
(2 Thes. y. 1). Note the phrase elsewhere, "con- 
tinuing steadfastly in prayer" (Rom. 12: 12), 
and the expressions indicative of Christian priv- 
ilege, — "praying at all seasons in the Spirit" 
(Eph. 6: 18), and "giving thanks always for all 
things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" 
(Eph. 5: 20). Dwell also on the suggestion, 
after he has expressed a wish for the peace of 
God in behalf of the Colossians, " Be ye thank- 
ful " (Col. 3: 15), and on his exhortation to the 
same church to have every word and deed pro- 
ceed from the prayer spirit (Col. 3: 17), and on 
his injunction, " Continue steadfastly in prayer, 
watching therein with thanksgiving" (Col. 4: 2). 
Recall, too, the oft-quoted teaching in the Phi- 
lippian epistle: "In everything by prayer and 
supplication with thanksgiving let your requests 
be made known to God" (Phil. 4: 6). And be- 
hold yet again his desire as expressed to Timothy 
that "supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanks- 
givings, be made for all men" (1 Tim. 2:1). 

Prayer, then, was finely interwoven into the 
very fabric of the apostle's life. It seems to have 
been connected with every fervent thought, every 



230 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

burning word, every important activity. He 
appears to have begun every letter with prayer. 
His plans of journeys were born in prayer; he 
set forth on every itinerary in the mood of prayer; 
his returns from abroad were all celebrated with 
thanksgiving. He could not reflect on absent 
friends without offering up a silent petition for 
their welfare. He mingled prayer with his ten- 
der advice, or his sterner admonitions. His af- 
flictions ever brought him to his knees, and 
thus increased his sweet intimacy with the God 
of all comfort. ''Every statement of doctrine 
seems to lead to a thanksgiving, every discussion 
of a practical subject seems to suggest a prayer." 1 
His statements of Christian truth, however they 
might seem to pertain to the intellectual rather 
than to the emotional realm in Christian experi- 
ence, were all charged with the temper of prayer 
as the heavy clouds are charged with electricity. 
Often even his sterner and more rugged teach- 
ings end with an exalted outburst of devotion. 
The great crises of his career are all marked with 
the evidence of prayer, as mountain tops in the 
Adirondacks are marked by the tripods of the 
surveyor. Truly he is a constant illustration of 
the truth that 

1 Howson, The Character 0/ St. Paul. 



ST. PAUL'S CHRISTLIKENESS 231 

" Prayer is the Christian's vital breath, 
The Christian's native air." 

Again, the study of the prayerfulness of the 
apostle Paul makes clear the close association of 
petition and thanksgiving as elements of prayer. 
Dr. Howson, in his well-known study of the 
apostle's character, seems to regard "thanksgiv- 
ing and prayer" as distinct; but it is clearly 
more accurate to regard thanksgiving as a form 
of prayer, or as one of its elements. Thanks- 
giving is not distinct from prayer, but is a part 
of it. The complete or ideal prayer always in- 
volves thanksgiving, though that outpouring of 
soul to God which involves only petition or only 
thanksgiving may be true prayer. Now it is 
clear that while St. Paul had many things to ask 
of God he never forgot his constant causes of 
thankfulness. His experience teaches that in 
prayer we both give and receive. We receive 
the blessing and we give the praise. In- 
deed, we are to remember that thanksgiving is 
the true ending or just climax of our prayers. 
As Maclaren of Manchester states it, "The 
prayer that begins with trustfulness, and passes 
on into waiting, will always end in thankfulness, 
triumph, and praise." 

Let us now consider the apostle's conscien- 



232 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

tiousness as a feature of his Christlikeness. And 
here we will examine the feature in question in 
the light of that revelation of himself afforded 
in his utterances rather than in the light of his 
history as narrated by St. Luke. The honest 
and high-toned regard of the apostle for his own 
reputation has already been spoken of; and his 
tender respect for weak consciences has also been 
dealt with. There remain to be glanced at, his 
general instructions about conscience, his appeals 
to conscience, his warnings against trifling with 
conscience, and his account of his lifelong 
habit concerning conscience. His unquestiona- 
ble sincerity leads us to infer from his words on 
these topics that he was a just man, a good man, 
a man who lived as conscious that the eye of 
God was ever on him — in other terms, that he 
was a true follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
What, then, does the apostle have to say 
about conscience ? Let us select teachings on 
the topic from his later utterances. Thus he 
declares to Timothy, "The end of the charge 
is love out of a pure heart and a good con- 
science and faith unfeigned" (i Tim. i: 5). 
Here love, the sum of the matter of Christlike- 
ness, is viewed as resting on the triple foundation 
of faith, conscientiousness, and heart purity. A 



ST. PAUL'S CHRISTLIKENESS 233 

"good conscience" must be maintained, or we 
are to understand that the blessed structure will 
fall. Later he indicates that the substance of 
his charge to one he probably loves most of all 
his vast circle of friends, and for whose spiritual 
prosperity he is accordingly most deeply so- 
licitous, is " holding faith and a good con- 
science" (1 Tim. 1: 18). It would seem that 
he regards faith and a correct life as eternally 
married; they may not be put asunder; they tell 
the whole story of a life as the Master would 
have it. Accordingly he insists with emphasis 
that office bearers — deacons for instance — must 
hold "the mystery of the faith in a pure con- 
science" (1 Tim. y. 9). And this teaching is an 
echo of his somewhat earlier instruction that it is 
demanded of all that their lives have reference to 
things honorable, just, pure, lovely, and of good 
report (Phil. 4: 8). Such, then, is the indication 
in the apostle's language, to look no further, of 
his respect for a good conscience, a truly upright 
and godly life. Surely he would have agreed that 

" He that has light within his own clear breast, 
May sit i' the center, and enjoy bright day ; 
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts, 
Benighted walks under the midday sun; 
Himself is his own dungeon." * 
1 Milton. 



234 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

His regard for the light of "the candle of the 
Lord " within man is shown, also, by his power- 
ful appeals to conscience. The heathen are not 
without this light, and with this fact he begins 
his argument in behalf of Christ to the pagan 
world (Rom. i: 20, 21). Humanly speaking, 
the only ground of hope for the acceptance of 
the gospel by members of heathen communities 
is the fact of the possession of a conscience by 
the lowest and most ignorant. If the heathen 
world were devoid of a sense of right and wrong 
there could be no room for the task of the mis- 
sionary. Hence we are not surprised at the 
apostle's appeals to conscience when he ad- 
dresses the pagan consciousness, as in Lystra or 
in Athens (Acts 14: 14-18; 17: 27). These 
appeals indicate clearly the apostle's respect for 
rightness of action, and incidentally throw light 
on his own ideal of conduct. 

But still further, conscience is so exalted, so 
divine a treasure, to his mind, that it is not to be 
trifled with. A thing may be right in itself, but 
if there be in any partially-instructed soul a 
scruple about it, to that soul it becomes a sin and 
it is to be avoided. The well-known warning to 
those of tender conscience against eating meats 
offered to idols is essentially a warning against 



ST. PAUL'S CHRISTLIKENESS 235 

playing with conscience, — " But he that doubteth 
is condemned if he eat" (Rom. 14: 2}] also 
1 Cor. 8: 12; 10: 28, etc.). To toy with con- 
science, or juggle with its arguments, is like 
playing with the divine fire between the 
cherubim. Thus its light will be extinguished, 
and as the light fails the fire is likely to consume 
the trifler. Our teacher here is plainly one who 
is keenly alive to the sense of right. 

He tells us, furthermore, with a noble frankness 
that is far above boastfulness, that following con- 
science has been his lifelong habit, — a practice 
that we believe must have grown like every 
other habit. Before Felix he solemnly declares, 
" Herein do I also exercise myself to have a con- 
science void of offense toward God and men al- 
way " (Acts 24: 16). Following conscience is 
ever a daily business with him. In connection 
with this assertion of his constant respect for his 
conscience we are to consider such a statement 
as this: "We preach not ourselves, but Christ 
Jesus as Lord" (2 Cor. 4: 5). We understand, 
then, that to his mind Christ the Lord as a per- 
sonal Saviour is in vital relation to correctness of 
conduct; is, in fact, the source of a pure life. 
But we are chiefly to note how conscientious the 
preacher seems to be in the matter of delivering 



236 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

a true message — that with Christ as its soul. He 
exercises himself to have a good conscience when 
he interprets the gospel, he is an ambassador 
true to his king. Of like purport is his pro- 
fession: "Knowing therefore the fear of the 
Lord, we persuade men, but we are made mani- 
fest unto God; and I hope that we are made 
manifest also in your conscience" (2 Cor. 5: 11). 
In general conduct, and in preaching, therefore, 
our apostle is one who is true to the Christ 
standard. In the relations of temporal business, 
likewise, he takes pains to act with strict correct- 
ness. We have already spoken of the principles 
that have guided him in monetary matters, but it 
remains to quote his statement of his own attitude 
in trying to avoid the slightest risk of criticism in 
this department: "Avoiding this, that any man 
should blame us in the matter of this bounty 
which is ministered by us" (2 Cor. 8: 20). In 
the light of teachings like these concerning con- 
science surely there is little room for the claim 
that the teacher places a principle, faith, in a 
sphere apart from right conduct. In the teach- 
ings and in the man we find that the tree— faith 
— is good, and that consequently the fruit — holy 
character — is likewise good. 
We do but follow the consensus of the Chris- 



ST. PAUL'S CHRISTLIKENESS 237 

tian thought of the ages in declaring that St. Paul 
was Christlike in this, that he was a man of duty. 
Not what is expedient, but what is right; not 
what is pleasurable, but what is right; not what 
is profitable in this present time, but what is 
right: this may truly be said to have been the 
rule by which the apostle ordered his course. 
"Duty," says Lacordaire, "is the grandest of 
ideas, because it implies the idea of God, of the 
soul, of liberty, of responsibility, of immortality." 
If this be correct St. Paul was actuated from his 
Damascus day to his coronation day by the no- 
blest idea. I cannot forget the moment when 
with beating heart I read the inscription on the 
stone marking the resting place of Mary Lyon, 
at Mount Holyoke: "There is nothing in the 
universe that I fear, but that I shall not know all 
my duty, or shall fail to do it." It is an echo of 
the feeling of St. Paul. And his regard for duty 
was inspired by the life, and the eternal demand, 
of Him who is everlastingly the effulgence of the 
Father's glory, and the very image of the sub- 
stance of the Omnipotent. 

The Christlikeness of St. Paul may be regarded 
likewise from the standpoint of his other-world- 
liness. Heaven as the abode of the Christ of 
glory was the firmest reality to him, and its 



'238 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

purity, peace, splendor, and everlastingness, were 
ever before his mind as more than an offset to 
all tribulations, and more than a full reward for 
all difficult endeavors. The farther he pursued 
duty's path the brighter the star of hope above 
him glowed; the deeper the valley of trial 
through which he passed the more perfectly the 
glory of the future surrounded him, dispelling all 
gloomy shadows. Probably there never lived a 
mere man to whom heaven was so real. 

Consider the evidences his language affords of 
his firm faith in the resurrection. The sources 
of that faith have been already dwelt on — the 
miraculous appearance of the risen Christ at his 
conversion, his visions, and those ordinary min- 
istrations of the Holy Spirit that are available for 
all believers. The strength of that faith is at 
every turn manifest in the epistles; and to attach 
but a secondary importance to it is to fail to 
learn the chief lesson of the apostle's life. His 
trust in the truth of the resurrection life is 
expressed in most vigorous language. He 
''knows " whom he has believed (2 Tim. 1 : 12). 
He declares that he believes, and hence writes, 
"knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus 
shall raise up us also with Jesus" (2 Cor. 4: 14). 
Earthly life and service, blessed as they are, are 



ST. PAUL'S CHRISTLIKENESS 239 

less desirable to him than the life to come. He 
knows that while he is at home in the body he 
is absent from the Lord (2 Cor. 5: 6). And ac- 
cording to his view the Christian is to be pitied, 
even if his earthly life is regulated by faith in 
Christ, provided the object of that faith be but a 
phantom, as it must be if Christ is not risen and 
the resurrection of believers is consequently but 
a delusion. " If," he writes to the Corinthians, 
"in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we 
are of all men most pitiable" (1 Cor.. 15: 19). 
Because of this reliance upon the future he can 
truly declare that his " citizenship is in heaven" 
(Phil. 3: 20), and he can laugh at the alleged de- 
feat that death threatens. Surely to his mind 

"There is no death. 
What seems so is but transition." 

Heaven to him is the first of realities. 

Accordingly we are sure that he measures 
all earthly values by the standard of heavenly 
wealth. He could truly say, "I coveted no 
man's silver, or gold, or apparel" (Acts 20: 33). 
Why ? Because he ever followed his own ad- 
vice to the Colossians to "seek the things that 
are above, where Christ is" (Col. 3: 1). But he 
was not led by this principle to any fanatical dis- 



2 4 o THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

regard of material blessings. He knew the 
power of health, and mental vigor, and oppor- 
tunity, and money; but he kept these in their 
true place. He used them all to the glory of 
God. He was rich toward God. He was in- 
finitely removed from the Epicurean philosophy 
of life. 

This ever-present sense of the reality of 
heaven enables him to sustain himself under the 
burden of the hardships of his life course and 
ministry. He reckons "that the sufferings of 
this present time are not worthy to* be compared 
with the glory which shall be revealed " toward 
him. The end makes the means easy. " For to 
this end we labor and strive, because we have 
our hope set on the living God/' (i Tim. 4: 10). 
Nowhere does he rise to a higher flight of ecstasy 
in contrasting the littleness of human trials with 
the glory of their end than in the magnificent 
peroration of the eighth chapter of Romans. 
"If God is for us," he cries, "who is against 
us?" God is heaven, and "neither death, nor 
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor 
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall 
be able to separate us from the love of God, 
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8: 38, 



ST. PAUL'S CHRISTLIKENESS 241 

39). The language of faith in ageless life never 
reached a higher level. 

Of course such a sense of heaven destroys the 
fear of death. Among the many expressions 
which reveal the apostle's personal attitude to- 
ward death these maybe recalled: "I hold not 
my life of any account, as dear unto myself" 
(Acts 20:24); that is, of course, apart from 
God's will. "Whether we wake or sleep" he 
teaches, "we should live together with him" 
(1 Thes. 5: 10). At Caesarea he is " ready not to 
be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem " 
(Acts 21 : 13). " Whether we live, we live unto 
the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the 
Lord: whether we live, therefore, or die, we are 
the Lord's" (Rom. 14:8). His times are cheer- 
fully left in God's hands. Calmly and without 
fear he declares to the Corinthians, that "God 
hath set forth us the apostles last of all, as men 
doomed to death" (1 Cor. 4: 9). We cannot 
but feel an admiration of the brute bravery with 
which the gladiators saluted the emperor calmly 
as men about to die; but how much loftier the 
courage of this Christian apostle in which there 
was no despair; who, because of the look across 
the grave, was enabled deliberately to turn his 
back on prosperity, friends, honor, wealth — a 



242 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

peaceful life followed by a peaceful death — and 
to choose rather, and in gladness of soul, a 
course of toil, privation, and pain, which must 
end, like his Master's, at some Calvary and at an 
inevitable cross! 

Fearlessness is in this other-worldliness, and 
also joy. His striving, beyond all seeking after 
the present fruits of an active and successful 
ministry, is for an incorruptible crown (i Cor. 
9: 25). And at life's summit he hardly knows 
which attracts him most— work for the Mas- 
ter below, or joy in the Master's presence 
above. He is "in a strait betwixt the two, hav- 
ing the desire to depart and be with Christ" 
(Phil. 1 : 2}). At the very last the sharpness 
of death is all lost in the ecstasy of the sight of 
the near haven, and the abiding throne, and the 
unfading crown. "I have fought the good 
fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the 
faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the 
crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the 
righteous judge, shall give to me at that day: 
and not only to me, but also to all them that 
have loved his appearing" (2 Tim. 4: 7, 8). 
Thus ends the earthly portion of this best and 
grandest of merely human lives. The best wine 
is offered at the feast's end. The career which 



ST. PAUL'S CHRISTLIKENESS 243 

has signified so much to the kingdom of God on 
earth ends in a shout of victory. Like his 
Master on Olivet he seems to ascend into a cloud. 
He passes above our sight, and he leaves all 
warfare, weariness, and pain, below. Heaven is 
on the earth to such a life. The future to him is 
but a fuller revelation of mysteries now in part 
understood, and of glories now in a measure 
realized. 



A great Atlantic steamer, after a winter voyage 
westward, calmly steams up New York harbor 
to her pier. A severe journey is ended. Yester- 
day, as during the days preceding, the staunch 
vessel was buffeting huge waves, facing a 
terrific head wind, and surrounded by an atmos- 
phere bitterly cold. She bears the scars of her 
conflict with the elements, Her deck and sides 
are heavily mantled with ice, and her rigging 
resembles the bleak trees of some Canadian 
forest in December, heavily encrusted with tons 
of ice. But on the morning of her arrival at her 
destined port, through one of those quick 
climatic changes common on our shore, she 
seems to have emerged into the warmth and 



244 THE MANY-SIDED PAUL 

light of a day in springtime. Her cargo is 
intact; her human freight has suffered no harm; 
her great engines are still at work — the smoke 
still pours in a steady stream from her great 
smokestack. As she moves nobly into the 
upper bay, her flag floating proudly from her 
peak, the sun smiles a welcome to her, causing 
rainbows to be reflected from her icy armor. 
The battle with the sea has issued in victory, and 
the ship is fast at her dock in the homeland! It 
is a type of the apostle's arrival home. His war- 
fare with unfriendly elements is accomplished; 
he has nobly, against many adversaries, wrought 
out his task; he has reached his haven; and all 
heaven, and all Christian generations on earth, 
the living and the unborn, may well unite to laud 
his triumph with a chorus of celestial praise. 



APPENDIX I 



Approximate Dates of St. Paul's Life 



[Time points determined by secular authorities, in italics] 

St. Paul's Birth (B. C.) I 

Conversion (A. D.) 32 

First Visit to Jerusalem after Conversion (Gal. 1 : 18) . 34 

Years in Syria and Cilicia 34-44 

Death of Herod Agrippa I. 44 

Second Visit to Jerusalem (Gal. 2: 1) . . . . 45 

First Missionary Tour Begins 46 

Third Visit to Jerusalem (Jerusalem Council) . . 50 
Second Missionary Tour Begins ..... 50 
Third Missionary Tour Begins ..... 54 

Imprisonment in Csesarea 58-60 

Festus Succeeds Felix 60 

Voyage to Rome 60-61 

Imprisonment in Rome 61-63 

Final Missionary Labors 63-66 

Martyrdom 67 

245 



APPENDIX II 



THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL 



List in 
Chronological Order 


Groups 


Periods 


Dates 

A. D. 

(about) 


Where Written 


Character 


i Thessalonians 
2 Thessalonians 


I 


2d Miss'y Tour 


<52 

53 


Corinth 


Eschatological 


Galatians 

i Corinthians 

2 Corinthians 

Romans 


II 


3d Miss'y Tour 


57 
57 
57 
58 


Ephesus? 

Ephesus 
Macedonia 

Corinth 


Soteriological 


Philippians 
Ephesians 
Colossians 
Philemon 


III 


First Roman 
Imprisonment 


62 
63 
63 
63 


Rome 


Personal 
Christological 

Personal 


Titus 
i Timothy 
2 Timothy 


IV 


Closing Years 


66 
66 
67 


Macedonia ? 
Rome 


Pastoral 



247 



Index of Scripture References 



PAGE 

Psalms. 

11 .4 105 

I4:i 27 

Isaiah. 

45 : 4 19 

Matthew. 

4:1 ...... 54 

4: 19, 20 38 

12 •' 13 37 

13 : 38 84 

19: 16 27 

20: 28 25 

28: 19 84 

John. 

l6: 12 214 

7-'5 2 43 

7:58 H 

Ch. 9 42, 222 

9:4-6 34 

9: 11 . . • . . . . 225 

9 : 12 • 222 

9:15 44 

9:20 43,53 

9 : 22 46, 55 

Chs. 13-21 .... 86 



Ch. 13 . 








. . 5 8f 


13: H 223 


13: 16 . . 








14, 184 


13:39 • 








• 59 


14: 3, 8-IO 








. 223 


14: I4-I8 








. 234 


14: 15 . 








. 184 


14: 22 . . 








102, 123 


14 : 23 . 








. 226 


15:36 . 








. 102 


16: 4 








. 108 


16: 7 








. 60 


16: 9 








. 222 


16: 16-18 








. 223 


16: 25 . 








74, 225 


16:31 . 








• 37 


16:37 . 








• 173 


17: 15 • 








. l 5 2 


17 : 22 . 








. 184 


17 : 26 . 








• • 199 


17:27 . 








• • 234 


17:28 . 








. . 16 


17:30 . 








• • 37 


18: 5 . 








• • 205 


18: 9, 10 








. . 222 


18:17 • 








. . 23 


18: 24 . 








. • 63 


19: II, 12 








. . 223 


20: IO . 








• . 223 



249 



250 INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 



PAGE 

20: 21 nc 

20 •• 24 62, 241 

20:27 190 

20 '• 33 • ■ 239 

2 ° : 35 186 

20 •• 36 225 

21 : 6 225 

21 •• r 3 • • • . 148, 241 
21 = 37 -...-. 126 
«■" 39 ...... 173 

Ch- 22 • • ' . . . 42, 222 

22: 3 I2 

22:I 4 19,43 

22: 17 225 

22:28 15,174 

2 3 : I 20 

2 3--n 222 

2 4-' 10 184 

2 4= 16 235 

2 5:n 174 

Ch. 26 42, 222 

2 6:2 x g 4 

26:8 21 

26: 14 22 

26 •' 22 , 23 42 

26: 29 j8i 

2 7- 2 3 222 

2 7=34 178 

2 8:8 226 

28:8,9 223 

2 $: 15 225 

Romans. 

Ch. 1 200 

*'•* 61 

1 : 3 205 



1:8 

1 : 9, 10 
I: 18 . 
I: 19 • 
I : 20, 21 
Ch. 2 . 
2: 2 

3-'9 

3: 22 . 

3- 24 • 
3:25 . 
4: i6ff 

4 : 25 . 
5= 1 

5=2 

5:3 
5:5 
5:8 . 

5: 12 . 
5 : 12-21 

5: 17 • 
5:18 . 

5 •• 19 • 

5 : 20 
5: 20, 21 
6:6 
6:8 
7: 1-6 
7:7 • 
7-'9 
7:12 . 

7 •' 14 • 
Ch. 8 . 
8: 1 
8:2 
8:3 • 



PAGE 
. . 227 
. . 227 
. . I99 

• ' 199 
. . 234 

. . 200 

• • *5 

. . 196 

. . 198 

. . 206 

. . 206 

. . 204 

. . 206 

. . 205 

• . 204 
. . 122 
. . 210 

199, 206 

. . 200 

• • i95 
. . 200 
. . 200 
. . 206 
. . 202 
, . 204 

. 196 
. . 196 

• • 194 
201, 202 

. 196 

, . 201 

. 201 

• 145 

. 207 

. 209 

205, 207 



INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 251 



9 
9 
9 

10 
10 
10 
10 
10 

12 
12 

12 
14 
14 
14 
Ch 
15 
l 5 
J 5 
*5 
16 



9 • 

10 . 

15 • 
i5-!7 

16 . 
26, 27 
29 . 
31 • 
34 • 
38,39 

5 • 

11 . 

23 • 
2 

4 • 
12, 

14 

17 

6 

10 

12 

18 



14 



Corinthians. 



PAGE 

209 
208 
210 
194 
209 
210 
205 
240 
206 
240 
205 
199 
199 
182 
203 
205 
35 
35 
204 
168 
229 
118 
241 
122 

235 
109 
199 
223 

78 
162 
208 



1:2 184 

1:4 227 

I: 14-16 112 













PAGE 


I : 18 206 


1 : 23, 24 . 










52 


2:2 . . 










48,6l 


2:7 . . 










199 


2: IO, 11 . 










2IO 


2: 13 . . 










2IO 


2: 14, 15 . 










209 


3: 1, 2 










2IO 


4:9 . . 










241 


5:1 . . 










"3 


5 : 3-5 • • 










"3 


5-"4 • • 










114 


5 : 7 • • 








11 


4, 207 


5: 11 . 










114 


6: I . 










118 


6: 11 . 










210 


Ch. 7 . 










211 


7 : 10 . 










205 


8: 12 . 










235 


9: 1 . 










. 213 


9 : 7-M 










. 109 


9: 15 • 










. no 


9: 15, 18 










. 176 


9: 25 . 










. 242 


10 : 4 










. 192 


10: 16 . 










• "3 


IO: 28 . 










• 235 


II: 2 3 ff. 










• 55 


11:23-25 










• 113 


12: 11 . 










. 210 


12: 13 . 










. 112 


Ch. 13 . 










• 145 


13:4 • 










. 150 


13:9 • 










. 216 


13:11 . 










. 46 


13: 12 . 










. 210 



252 INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 



Ch. 15 42, 123 

15 : 9 26 

15: 10 186 

15 : l 9 239 

15 : 22 195, 200 

I5 : 33 l6 

Ch. 16 109 

16: 1-4 ill 

16:3 ill 



2 Corinthians. 



I : 

Ch. 
2: 
2: 
2: 
4 = 

4 = 

5 : 

5: 

5 : 

5 = 
5 = 
5: 

5 = 
5 = 

6: 
6: 

7 = 
7 = 
8: 
8: 
Ch. 

9 = 
II : 



4 • 
2 

4 • 
7 • 
12, 13 

5 • 
14 . 

6 . 
n . 
14 . 

17 • 

18 . 

19 . 

20 . 

21 . 
10 . 
14 . 

4 • 

5 • 
9 • 
20 . 

9 • 
2 

22 . 



122 

113 
116 
114 

152 

235 
238 

239 
236 

195 
209 
206 
206 

61 
205 
171 
114 

74 

73 
205 
236 
109 
no 

14 



1 1 : 24-26 
12: 1-4 
12: 8 . 
12: 10 . 
12: 12 . 
12: 15 . 



PAGE 

93 
222 
227 

66 
223 
100 



Galatians. 



Ch. 



16 



42 

207 

174 

213 

19 

54 

85 

178 

107 



.4 

10 
12 

17 

21 
10 
11 

16 38, 208 

20 32, 206 

.... 203 

.... 193 

. . . . 201 

. . . . 202 

.... 38 

.... "3 

.... 194 

. . . . 202 

. . . . 202 

.... 208 



21 .... , 

19 

21 ... . 

24 .... , 

26 

27 .... 
1-7 ... . 

3 . . . . 

9 . . . . 

14 ... . 

H, 15 *57 

2 203 

22, 23 209 



Ephesians. 



19 
199 



INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 253 



PAGE 

i: 15, 16 ....... 227 

2:1 200 

2:3 200 

2:4 *99 

2:8 204 

2: 10 19 

2: 15 204 

3- J 3 74 

4:2 118 

4:3 2I ° 

4=7 • • • 2 °4 

5 : 20 229 

5 : 22, 23 211 

5 : 2 3 20 5 

5 : 3° 2 °5 

6: 18 229 

Philip picms. 

Chs. 1-4 74, 145 

1:3 75 

i:3-7 22 7 

I : 21 62, 220 

I : 23 242 

2:1 75 

2: 12 118 

2:5-11 ■ 205 

2: 12, 13 209 

2:18 75 

3= l 75 

3:3 2I ° 

3:5 J 4 

3=6 21 

3 : 12-14 2IO 

3 : I 3 2 °9 

3: 13, 14 ...... . 62 

3 : 2 ° 2 39 



PAGH 

4:2 Il8 

4=4 75 

4:6 229 

4:8 2 33 

4: 16 109 

Colossians. 

Chs. 1-4 74 

1 : 3, 9> IO 22 7 

1 : 15 2 °5 

I : 20 205 

2:6 38 

3 : 1 2 39 

3:3 *96 

3=11 "9 

3= 15 22 9 

3= 17 22 9 

4:2 229 

4= 3 l62 

1 Thessalonians. 

1:2 226 

1:6 210 

2:5 182 

2: 9 ........ 176 

2: 13 226 

3 : IO 226 

4: 13 I2 3 

5 : 10 241 

5: 17 228 

5 : 25 162, 228 

2 Thessalonians. 

i:5 I2 3 

I : 1 1 227 

2: 5 *74 

3:1 162, 229 



254 INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 



I Timothy. 



3,4 
5 

12 
13 

J 5 



1 

8-12 
J-7 • 

9 • 
6 . 

10 . 
14 • 
23 • 
5 • 
l 7 ■ 



2 Timothy. 



104 

232 

228 

26 

26 

233 
229 
104 

104 

2 33 
103 
240 
211 

178 

io 5 
106 



3 21, 228 

7 105 

12 35, 4o, 238 

l S .. 152 

16 164 



1 103 

1 5 65, 103 

16 104 



2: 
2 : 
2 : 
2: 
3: 
4: 
4: 

4= 7> 
4 = 
4 = 

4 
4 
4 = 



!52 

193 

io 5 
209 



l 5 2 

J 52 

164 

178 

164 



Titus. 



vs. 1-25 

4 • 
22 . 



Philemon. 



103 
104 

io 5 

16 

105 



185 
228 
162 



General Index 

Achaia, Paul's work in, 86. 

Adam, sin traced to, 195. 

Adeney, Prof., 113, 194, 208, 215. 

Adroitness, Paul's, in use of church funds, 1 10. 

Affectionateness, Paul's, 150. 

Afflicted, Paul's treatment of the, 122. 

Afflictions, prayer in, 227. 

Agreeableness, Paul's, 179. 

Agrippa, 23 ; Paul's courtesy toward, 180, 184. 

Alexander, why a great general, 135. 

Alexander the coppersmith, 152. 

Analysis, Paul's fondness for, 195. 

Ananias, seen in vision, 222. 

Andronicus, 155. 

Angel, Paul's vision of on shipboard, 222. 

Angels, 193. 

Antioch in Syria, 86, 87, 89. 

Antioch of Pisidia, 87 ; Paul's sermon in, 57. 

Antithesis, Paul's use of, 194. 

Apollos, 155 ; sent to Corinth, 180. 

Apostles, three, indorse Paul and Barnabas, 108. 

Aquila, 155. 

Arabia, Paul in, 54. 

Archippus, 155. 

Aristarchus, 155. 

Aristotle, Paul and, 138. 

Arnold, Matthew, 187. 

Athens, Paul in, 88; message from, to Silas and Timothy, 152; 

introduction to sermon in, 184; Paul's sermon in, 234; 

church in, 95. 
Attalia, Sy. 

255 



256 GENERAL INDEX 

Bacon, Prof., 87. 

Balaam, false friends of, 165. 

Baptism, seldom practiced by Paul, 112; Paul's respect for as a 

rite, 112. 
Barnabas, 86. 
Beecher, H. W., 120. 
Beneficence, Paul's references to, 109. 
Bereaved, the. See Afflicted. 
Bercea, 88. 
Bithynia, 88. 
Boyhood of Paul, 13. 
Brainerd, David, prayerfulness of, 225. 
Brooks, Phillips, 78. 
Browning, Robert, 12. 
Burns, Robert, 172. 
Business, pastors and practical, 1 12; conscience in, 236. 



C^sar, 135. 

Caesarea, 89; Paul parting from friends in, 149. 

Captain, chief, in Jerusalem, 173. 

Carlyle, on friendship, 148. 

Cartwright, Peter, 56. 

Catechism, Westminster, 44. 

Charitableness of Paul toward the unruly, 119. 

Charles the Great, 135. 

Cheerfulness, Paul's, 74. 

Chesterfield, Lord, 172. 

Children, the pastor's, 104. 

Chivalry in argument, 182. 

Christ, and Paul, 212; Paul's conception of, 41-44, 47; Paul's 
supreme loyalty to, 60, 164; Paul on person and offices of, 
207; Pauline teaching on person of, 204; and Law, 202; 
God's supreme embodiment of grace, 204 ; obedience of, 
206 ; humanity of, 205 ; as Redeemer, 205 ; resurrection 
of, 206; righteousness from, 195; prayerfulness of, 224; 
the pastor's loyalty to, 103. See Person of Christ. 



GENERAL INDEX 257 

Christianity, appeals to intellect, 127 ; an argument for, in 

Paul's genius, 128. 
Church, Paul respects authority of the, 108. 
Church government, theories of not under review, 108. 
" Church mutineers," 105. 
Churches, founded by Paul, classified, 95. 
Cilicia, Paul's labors in, 85, 88. 
Circumcision, Paul's attitude toward, 133. 
Citizenship, Paul's, in heaven, 238. See Nationality. 
Clarke, J. F\, 168, 169, 217. 

Coleridge, S. T., 169, 220; a believer in prayer, 224. 
Colossae, Church in, 95. 
Colossians, Paul requests the prayers of the, 162; prays for the, 

227 ; unity argued for in the Epistle to the, 118. 
Common sense, Paul's, shown in Corinthian Epistles, 117. 
Conciliation, Paul's spirit of, illustrations of, 183. 
Condemnation, universal, 200. 
Conscience, 232-237 ; Paul early follows, 20, 21 ; Paul's views 

on, 23 1 ; Paul appeals to, 234. 
Consciences, weak, Paul's treatment of, 121 ; views concern- 
ing, 234. 
Conscientiousness, Paul's, a striking feature, 231, 235. 
Considerateness. illustrations of Paul's, 177. 
Contentious, Paul's method with the, 117. 
Conversion, Paul's, 14, 197; method and significance of, 28 ; 

nature of, 29. 
Converts, number of Paul's, 94. 
Corinth, Paul in, 88; issues in, 116; Paul's vision in, 222; 

Paul cheered in, 161 ; Paul baptizes in, 112; Paul's 

prayers for saints in, 227. 
Corinthians, 1 and 2 Epistles to the, date of, 89; reproofs 

in, 121. 
Corinthians, 1 Epistle to the, primary purpose of, 115; opening 

sentence of, 184; Maurice on value to the divinity student 

of, 117. 
Cornelius, 18. 
Council, Jerusalem, Paul in the, 108. 



258 GENERAL INDEX 

Courage, Paul's, 73; the pastor's, 105. 

Courtesy, Paul's, J. F. Clarke on, 168; J. T. Fields on, 1 68. 

Covetousness, Paul's freedom from, 239. 

Cowardice, Paul's hatred of, 107. 

Cowper, William, 52, 190. 

Credulity, faith distinguished from, 36. 

Crescens, 155. 

Crete, Paul's work in, 86; church in, 95. 

Criticism, Paul's, of his friends, 165 ; Paul avoids risk of, 236. 

Cross, vital doctrine of the, 206. 

Cydnus, River, 13. 

Cyprus, 86. 

Deacons. See Office bearers. 

Dead line, no intellectual, in Paul, 141. 

Death, and sin, 200 ; no fear of in Paul, 241 ; Longfellow on, 239. 

Debts, church, one cause of, 112. 

Decrees. See Predestination. 

Decrees of Jerusalem council, 108. 

Delicacy, Paul's, shown in Epistle to Philemon, 185. 

Demas, 155. 

Derbe, 87, 88. 

Development, Paul's spiritual, 45, 46; Matheson on, 141. 

Dialectics. See Logic. 

Disagreeable tasks, Paul's faithfulness in, 166. 

Disciples in Ephesus. See Ephesus. 

Discipline, church, Paul's relation to, 113. 

Divinity of Christ, 205. 

Doctrine, prayer and, 230. See Theology. 

Dogma. See Theology. 

Drummond, Henry, and his friends, 165. 

Drummond, R. J., 20. 

Duty, Paul's early respect for, 20; Paul's lifelong respect for, 237. 

Earnestness, the preacher's, 72. 
Elders of Ephesus. See Miletus. 
Eliot, the missionary, prayerfulness of, 224. 



GENERAL INDEX 259 

Eloquence, Paul's, 145. 

Emerson, R. W., 126, 170, 171, 172, 185; fairness of, in 

debate, 181. 
Epaphras, 155. 
Epaphroditus, 155, 178. 
Ephesians, Epistle to, prayer spirit in, 227. 
Ephesus, Paul's labors in, 89 ; John's disciples in, baptized by 

Paul, 112; Paul's pastoral visits in, 115. 
Epistles, Paul's, combine doctrine and practice, 211 ; many 

commentaries on, 131 ; are letters of a. missionary, 80; 

originality of, 130. 
Erasmus, 144. 
Erastus, 155. 

Essentials, illustrations of, alone to be insisted on, 1 33. 
Ethics, Paul's, 211. 
Etiquette, Paul's rules of, 186. 
Euodia, 118. 

Europe, entry of gospel into, 88. 
Evidence, faith depends on, 35. 
Excommunication, sometimes demanded, 114. 

Fair dealing, a mark of the gentleman, 181. 

Faith, a complex act, 207; analysis and definition of, 34; Schaff 
on, 32 ; Paul, best illustration of, t>Z > works and, insepara- 
ble, 232. 

Faith in the unseen, strength of Paul's, 238. 

Faith life, various aspects of, 209. 

Fanatic, Paul not a, 239. 

Fancy, Paul lacking in, 137. 

Farrar, F. W., 22, 28, 66, 95, 129, 166, 186. 

Fasting and prayer, 226. 

Fearlessness, Paul's, 241. 

Felix, Paul's courtesy toward, 184, 235. 

Festus, 174. 

Fields, J. T., 168. 

Finality, Paul's teaching not a, 216. 

Finance, church. See Beneficence. 



2 6o GENERAL INDEX 

Financial support, Paul accepts, defends pastor's receipt of, is 

unselfish with respect to, 109, 1 10. 
Financier, Paul as a church, 109-112. 
Finney, C. G., 56. 
Flattery, Paul never resorts to, 182. 
Foreordination. See Predestination. 
Friends, Paul's list of, 155 ; prayers of Paul's, 161. 
Friendship, viewed as an occasion of Paul's epistles, 159; 

Paul's, an aid to zeal, 158; quotations concerning, 148 ff; 

biblical illustrations of, 163. 
Fundamentals. See Essentials. 

Galatia, churches in, 87. 

Galatians, Epistle to the, reproofs in, 121. 

Gallio, 23. 

Gamaliel, 14. 

Genius, consecrated, 145; Paul a true, 128; Paul's, shown by 
his vast plans, 135. 

Gentleman, title of, applied to Paul by many, 169; what con- 
stitutes the, 173-185. 

Gilbert, G. H., 89. 

Giving, Jesus' words on, 186. 

Gladiators, brute courage of, 241. 

Gladstone, mental vigor of, in old age, 142 ; prayer habit of, 224. 

God, Paul's early reverence for, 22; holiness of, 198; suffi- 
ciency of, for the believer, 240. 

Godet, 13, 197. 

Golden rule, followed by Paul, 180. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 27, 100. 

Good breeding, inspired by Christianity, 187. 

Good manners, moral element in, 175. 

Gospel, Paul's teaching a true, 212. 

Grace, and "the graces," 186; Paul's enabling, 228; in O. T. 
and N. T., 203; embodied in Christ, 204; Paul a child 
of, 17 ; prenatal, 19. 

Great-heartedness, Paul's, 153. 

Greece, Paul in, 89. 



GENERAL INDEX 261 

Greek, Paul's knowledge of, 15. 

Growth, Emerson on intellectual, 126; Paul's disposition to, 

139; the moral element in, 142. 
Guilt, how imputed, 200. 

Hagar and Mt. Sinai, 193. 

Hall, Dr. John, 115. 

Happiness, Plutarch on, 126. 

Hardships, Paul's, 91, 160, 240. 

Hausrath, 87. 

Heathen, conscience in the, 234. 

Heaven, reality of, to Paul, 237-243 ; Paul's vision of third, 222. 

Hebraism, 187. 

Hebrews, Epistle to the, non-Pauline authorship of, 198. 

Hellenism, 187. 

Heredity, a factor in Paul's character, 18. 

Hermogenes, 152. 

Herodion, 155. 

High priest, reproved by Paul, 121. 

Hodge, Dr. Charles, on inspiration, 139; on the logic of 
Paul, 138. 

Hodge, Dr. A. A., 40; on church discipline, 114. 

Holy Spirit, Paul's life shaped by the, 224 ; Paul's teaching on 
the, 210; Paul's inspiration by the, 215; source of Paul's 
epistles, 159; the agent in conversion, 30; and the 
heathen, 197 ; the source of Paul's peculiar originality, 
131 ; the source of Scripture, 139. 

Home, Paul's early, 151. 

Hospitality, the pastor's practice of, 104. 

Howson, J. S., 74, 170, 174, 175, 180, 181, 230. 

Humanity of Christ, 205. 

Humility, Paul's, 66, 174. 

Humor, Paul lacking in, 74. 

Hunt, Prof. T. W., 187. 

Hymenaeus, 152. 

Iconium, 87. 



262 GENERAL INDEX 

Imagination, did Paul lack, 137. 

Impartiality, social, required of the pastor, 105. 

Independency, Paul does not stand for, 108. 

Indignation, righteous, 105. 

Infinite, Paul's grasp of the, 139. 

Inspiration, Hodge on, 139. 

Intellect, a great, demands admiration, 127. 

Intolerance concerning nonessentials, 134. 

Jailer in Philippi, Paul and the, 112. 
Jannes and Jambres, 193. 

Jerusalem, Paul studies in, 13; Paul's vision in, 222. 
Jesus, pre-Christian Paul and, 24, 25. 
John, an illustration of friendship, 163. 
Jonathan, as a friend, 163. 
Jowett, Principal, 45, 170. 
Joy, Paul's, 242. 
Joyousness, Paul's, 74. 
Judas, Paul's prayer in the house of, 225. 
Judson, Adoniram, prayerfulness of, 225. 
Junias, 155. 

Jurisprudence, Paul's use of terms of, 193. 
Justification, faith and, 59; in the O. T., 64; Paul's method of 
treating, 194; Adeney on, 208. 

Kerr Lectures, 1899, 1900, 20. 

King, Christ as ascended, 44. 

Knowledge, involved in faith, 34 ; faith and, 238. 

Lacordaire, 237. 

Language, Paul's. See Style. 

Law, Paul's pre-Christian attitude toward the, 21 ; Paul's usage 

of the term, 201 ; the, ordained through angels, 193. See 

Mosaic covenant. 
Lawsuits, Paul's teaching on, 118. 
Letters, notable Christian men of, 145. 
Letter writing, politeness in, 185. 



GENERAL INDEX 263 

Liddon, H. P., 220. 

Life, Paul's, surrendered to God, 241. 

Literature, Paul's epistles viewed as original, 1 3 1. 

Litigation. See Lawsuits. 

Livingstone, David, pioneer spirit of, 83 ; prayer habit of, 225. 

Logic, Paul's power of, 137. 

Loneliness, Paul's sense of, 152. 

Longfellow, H. W., 32, 239. 

Lord's Supper, 55 ; observance of, insisted on, Prof. Adeney 

on, 113. 
Love, Christ's motive, 206; the basis of discipline, 114; the 

beauty of I Cor. on, 145 ; the source of Paul's counsels, 117. 
Loyalty of Paul's friends, 156. 

Luke, and Paul, 157 ; Paul's companion in Rome, 152. 
Luthardt, 39. 
Luther, on faith, 33 ; on Paul's literary style, 144 ; prayerful- 

ness of, 224. 
Lydia, hospitality of, 156. 
Lynch, Annie C, 78. 
Lyon, Mary, devotion to duty of, 237. 
Lystra, 87, 88; Paul's sermon in, 234. 

MacDonald, George, 39. 

Macedonia, Paul in, 89 ; Paul's final tour in, 86. 
Maclaren, Alexander, 231. 
Magnetism, Paul's, 150, 154. 
Mark, John, 86; Paul's break with, 107. 
Market of Appius, 161, 225. 

Marriage, doubts concerning, in Corinth, 116; Paul on, 21 1. 
Marriage contract, figure of the, 194. 
Martineau, 144. 

Martyrdom, Paul's complacency in facing, 242. 
Matheson, George, 24, 141. 
Matthew, conversion of, 18. 
Maurice, F. D., 117. 

Meats, offered to idols, 116; and drinks, Paul's view on, 133. 
See Consciences, weak. 



264 GENERAL INDEX 

Mercy, a revelation of divine holiness and love, 199. 

Messiah, hope of the, shared by Paul before conversion, 15 ; 

Christ viewed as the, 42. 
Miletus, prayer of Paul with elders at, 225. 
Milton, 233. 

Ministers, Paul's relation to his brother, 107. 
Miracles, list of Paul's, 223. 
Miraculous, the, in Paul's conversion, 28; a factor in Paul's 

experience, 223. 
Mischna, quoted, 13. 

Missionary, call and qualifications of the, 85. 
Missions, modern, indebted to Paul, 98. 
Money. See Bejtefjcejice. 
Moody, D. L., 56 ; sympathy of, 70. 
Moore, the poet, 67. 

Moralist, the, an antitype of the early Paul, 27. 
Mosaic covenant, Paul's early faithfulness to the, 21. 
Mother, Paul's, 151. 

Napoleon, large plans of, 135. 

Nationality, Paul's, 14. 

Neander, 221. 

Newman, J. H., 170, 182. 

Nicodemus, 37. 

Nonessentials, illustrations of, 133. 

Obedience, involved in faith, 36; Christ's, 206. 

Offender, in Corinth, 113. 

Office bearers, conscience in, 233. 

Old Testament, Christ in the, 64. See Law; Mosaic covenant. 

Omissions, Paul's, significance of, 132. 

Onesimus, 155. 

Onesiphorus, 155, 157, 161. 

Open-handedness, Philippians and Galatians an illustration 

of, 156. 
" Oracles " of God, 15. 
Originality, Paul's native, 131 ; Carlyle on, 129 ; two sorts of, 130. 



GENERAL INDEX 265 

Other-worldliness, Paul's. See Heaven. 
Outlook, Paul's broad, 197. 

Pamphylia, 86. 

Paphos, 86. 

Pastor, function of the, 10 1 ; qualities of the, as indicated in the 
Pastoral Epistles, 102 ; Goldsmith on the, 100 ; Vinet on 
the, 100. 

Pastoral Epistles, revelation of Paul's character in the, 103. 

Patriotism, Paul's teaching and, 119. 

Paul, St., birth and boyhood of, 13; a pupil of Gamaliel, 14; a 
witness of Stephen's death, 14; conversion of, 28; period 
of, in Arabia, 54; subject-matter of preaching of, 57; 
qualifications of, as a missionary, 80; period of, in Syria 
and Cilicia, 85, 88; first missionary journey of, 86; second 
missionary journey of, 87 ; third missionary journey of, 88; 
the last journeys of, 86 ; the faith of, 34, 48 ; spiritual de- 
velopment of, 45 ; attitude of, toward Christ, 41, 212. 

Pauline theology. See Theology. 

Peace, to be studied by the pastor, 104. 

Peacemaker, the pastor as, 119. 

Perga, 86. 

Perplexed, Paul's dealings with the, 115. 

Person of Christ, 207 ; faith terminates on the, ^8. See Christ. 

Perspective, moral, 132. 

Peter, St, conversion of, 18; Paul's rebuke of, 165; Paul's 
relation to, 107. 

Pettiness, freedom from, a mark of the gentleman, 179; Intel- 
lectual, 134; to be avoided by the pastor, 104. 

Philemon, 155; delicacy of Paul toward, 185; Paul recognizes 
the prayerfulness of, 162; Paul's prayers for, 228; idyllic 
quality of the Epistle to, 145. 

Philetus, 152. 

Philippi, 88 ; prayers in prison of, 225 ; Paul's prayers for 
saints in, 227. 

Philippians, open-handedness of the, 156; reproofs in the 
Epistle to the, 121. 



266 GENERAL INDEX 

Phygelus, 152. 

Picturesqueness, Paul's mental, 196. 

Pilate, 23. 

Pioneer spirit, Paul's, 82. 

Plain speaking, the pastor and, 105. 

Plutarch, 126. 

Poetry, Hebrew, 194. 

Poets, Greek, Paul's quotations from, 16. 

Poor saints, 178. 

Popularity, less than friendship, 156. 

Prayer, a practical experience with Paul, 224, 228, 229 ; Paul's 

exhortations to, 228 ; subjects of, not limited, 229 ; doctrine 

and, 230; thanksgiving an element in, 231. 
Prayers, list of Paul's, 225; Paul's, for his friends, 164; of 

Paul's friends for him, 161. 
Prayerfulness, references to Paul's, 226. 
Preacher, preparation of the* 53 ; theme of the, 57 ; qualities of 

the successful, 59ff; value of friends to the, 158; as a 

pastor, 101. 
Predestination, 199 ; Paul's conversion illustrates, I4ff. 
Prelatical spirit, Paul free from, 108. 
Priscilla, 155. 

Propitiation, a Pauline term, 206. 
Proportion, Paul's sense of, 132. 
Proverbs, book of The, quotations from, 166. 
Prudence, Paul's, in handling money, ill. 
Publius, father of, 226. 
Purity, peace and, 118. 
Purpose, Paul's, in life, vastness of, 135. 

Rabbinisms, Paul's, 64, 137, 192. 

Ramsay, W. M., 87, 95, 169. 

Rebukes, Paul's, of his friends, 165. 

Reconciliation, effected by Christ, 206. 

Redemption, Christ the instrument of, 205 ; results of, 207. 

Reliability, Paul's, 212. 

Renan, 94. 



GENERAL INDEX 267 

Reproofs, illustrations of Paul's, 121. 

Resurrection, of Christ, a vital matter, 206 ; Paul's faith in the, 
238; the, a question in Corinth, 116; the bereaved and 
the, 123. 

Revelation, Paul's system is of, 212. 

Righteous One, Christ as the, 42. 

Righteousness, Christ the source of, 195 ; viewed as a rela- 
tion, 196. 

Robertson, F. W., 52. 

Rock, the, that followed Israel, 192. 

Romans, Epistle to the, date of, 89; preamble to, 197; O. T. 
quotations in, 192; grandeur of passages in, 145; power 
of logic in, 138; treatment of sin in, 201. 

Romans, prayers of, requested, 162. 

Rome, Paul's prayers for saints in, 227. 

Ruler, the young, 27. 

Ruskin, John, 187. 

Ruth the Moabitess, 163. 

Sacraments, Paul on the, 112. 

Salamis, 86. 

Salvation, a gift for all, 197. 

Samson, love of, a snare, 165. 

Saviour, Christ as universal, 44. See Christ. 

Schaff, P., 32, 169. 

Scourgings, Paul's, 93. 

Scriptures, Paul's early respect for the, 15 ; Paul's mature 

attitude toward the, 58, 192; the preacher and the, 63; 

the pastor and the, 103. 
Sects, often born of trivial questions, 134. 
Seleucia, 86. 

Self-abandon, the preacher's, 67. 
Self-consciousness, Dr. Howson on, 174. 
Self-depreciation, Paul's, 26, 174. 

Self-respect, a quality of the gentleman, 173; Paul's, 173. 
Self-sacrifice, Paul's early spirit of, 23. 
Sensationalism, to be avoided by the pastor, 104. 



268 GENERAL INDEX 

Sensibility, Paul's fine, 185. 

Sensitiveness, Paul's, 151. 

Separatist, Paul no, 108. 

Sermons, list of Paul's, 57. 

Seven churches of Asia, 95. 

Shakespeare, 181. 

Silas, 87. 

Sin, origin of, a mystery, 195 ; Adamic source of, 200; viewed 

as having personality, 196; divine abhorrence of, 199; 

consequences of, 200; treatment of, in Epistle to the 

Romans, 201 ; deliverance from, 201. 
Singleness of aim, Paul's, 62. 
Sister, Paul's, 14. 
Son of man, Christ as, 43. 
Son of God, Christ as, 43. 
Sorrow, the ministry of, 122. 
Speculative faith, 37. 
Spirit, of Christ, determines Paul's friendships, 150. See Holy 

Spirit. 
Spurgeon, Charles, modesty of, 68. 
Stalker, James, 83, 86, 154, 157, 190, 197. 
Stanley, A. P., 155, 169. 
Steadfastness, in prayer, 229. 
Stephen, martyrdom of, 14, 41, 43. 
Stephens, G. B., 191. 
Style, Paul's literary, 143. 
Subjectiveness of Paul, 106. 
Supernatural. See Miracles ; Miraculous. 
Suspicion, absence of, in Paul, 179. 
Sympathy, the preacher's, 68. 
Syntyche, 118. 
Syria, Paul's labors in, 85, 88; and Cilicia, 96. 

Tact, the preacher's, 70. 

Tarsus, 13; University of, 15 ; influences on Paul in, 151. 

Taverns, Three, 225. 

Taylor, W. M., 57, 61, 72, 115. 



GENERAL INDEX 269 

Temple, Paul's prayer in the, 225. 

Tennyson, the poet, 46, 50, 163. 

Tertius, 155. 

Thanksgiving, Paul's, in behalf of friends 226 ; an element of 

prayer, 231. 
Theologian, Paul's influence as a, 216. 
Theology, Paul's sources of, 198, 212; Weiss's estimate of, 191 ; 

Stalker on, 190. 
Theory and practice in Paul's epistles, 211. 
Thessalonians, 1 and 2, Epistles to the, date of, 88; primary 

aim of, 123 ; reproofs in, 121 ; Paul asks for prayers in, 162. 
Thessalonica, 88. 
Tholuck, 13. 

Thorn in the flesh, Paul's, 227. 
Thought, Paul's, freshness and vigor of, 128. 
Thought forms, Paul's 191. 
Thoughtfulness, Paul's, for others, 150. 
Thrift, Paul's, in use of church funds, 1 10. 
Timothy, 88, 159 ; Paul's prayers for, 228. 
Titus, 155. 

Tongues, speaking with, 116. 
Trade, Paul's, 16, 63. 
Travel, in first century, 91. 
Trials, Paul's. See Hardships. 
Tribulation, ministry of, 122. 
Triumph, Paul's final, 243. 

Troas, 88, 89; Paul's loneliness in, 152; Paul's vision in, 222. 
Trophimus, 155, 178. 
Trumbull, H. C, 149, 159, 163. 
Trust, the essence of faith, 39. See Faith. 
Truth, Cowper on, 190. 
Tychicus, 155. 
Tyre, prayer meeting at, 225. 

Unity, teaching concerning, 118. 
University of Tarsus, 15. 
Unselfishness, Paul's, 163, 175. 



270 GENERAL INDEX 

VlNET, IOO. 

Vision, Paul's breadth of, 135. 

Visions; Paul's, 60, 213, 221. 

Visitation, pastoral, illustrated by Paul, 115. 

Vitality, Paul's mental, 142. 

War, in light of Paul's teachings, 119. 

Washington, George, 26. 

Weak brethren. See Conscience. 

Wealth, not to influence the pastor, 106. 

Weiss, 191. 

Weizsacker, 87. 

Wilkinson, W. C, 215. 

Will, exercised in faith, 36. 

Woman, the pastor and, 104. 

Works, good, and salvation, 29. 

World, Paul seeks the evangelization of the, 136. 

Worship, the pastor in public, 104. 

Zacch^us, 25, 37. 
Zenas, 155. 






*^ <\ 



** V ^ 



•b*^ 

V 















v 












